


Arcane Incidents of Anoxia

by Bellovebug



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Dave Katz needs a hug, God makes an appearance, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Klaus dies, Klaus is immortal, M/M, but hes alone, dave goes to the future, dave is alive but klaus is not, help him, im gonna hurt the boy in this one, im so sorry, the hargreeves siblings being garbage at emotions, the original characters are all soldiers and they're there for like two seconds
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26293021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bellovebug/pseuds/Bellovebug
Summary: Klaus dies.Klaus dies, and Dave can't breathe.He forgets what it's like, the feeling of oxygen entering his lungs, the sensation of carbon dioxide exiting them.He remembers, though, the stories Klaus used to tell. He remembers that joke he'd made about that briefcase he always carried around being a time machine. He remembers the tall tales of a family of superpowers, a less than stellar father. He remembers the stories he'd spun out of thin air, of time travel and a disappearing brother and a talking chimpanzee and a robot mother.(He remembers the true story he'd told about seeing ghosts.)He only learns once he opens that mysterious briefcase under Klaus's cot that all of the stories were true.Every one of them.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves & David "Dave" Katz, Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz, Number Five | The Boy & David "Dave" Katz, The Hargreeves & David "Dave" Katz
Comments: 140
Kudos: 501





	1. Prologue

The whistling of artillery crescendos like an age old symphony in Dave's ears.

The orange hues of smattering gunfire lights up the barracks like a flame, like a flickering candle in the breeze, giving him snapshots of the world out of the corner of his eye.

(If only they were as easy to snuff out.)

_ "Christ  _ on a  _ cracker!"  _ He hears Klaus say beside him, in a tone of voice so light and innocent, a way of speaking that has no place in the A Shau Valley- a tone of voice only Klaus has ever been able to use here in an entirely genuine way. "That was a close-"

And the constant pattering of guns and tea-kettle whistles and the general cacophony of sounds around him are a barrage on his ears, and yet, somehow, the way Klaus's voice so suddenly cuts into silence cuts through it all like a hot knife through butter, and he knows something Is wrong.

He hunches lower, shoulders tensing, and waits for Klaus to continue his sentence, because if Klaus was talking, then he was alright. ("Alright" being a relative term- sometimes, it meant healthy and right as rain in the head. Sometimes it just meant alive. Either way, it was hard to tell with Klaus, whether he was genuinely okay, or if he was just composed enough to act like he was. Dave wonders, some days, whether he'll ever even scratch the surface of whatever is really underneath Klaus's carefully constructed pane of false glass.)

Klaus says nothing.

It's not silent- it never is, out there.

"Klaus?"

But the lack of response echoes loud enough to burst his already aching ear drums.

"Klaus!?"

He chances a glance over at him over the butt of his rifle, and Klaus is slumped further forward than would be considered normal, leaning limply against the burlap barriers, his rifle slack and leaned on the ground pointed to the sky. Dave can't see his face under his helmet, but just a few locks of his curly hair peak out from under it- it's dark, but in the camera-flash milliseconds of light, he's sure he can see dust and dirt and sand resting in a thin film over his entire form, desaturating his image and muting his colors, which had always seemed so much more vibrant than those around him, despite having the exact same regulation fatigues as the rest of them. 

Dave sucks in a breath and ducks entirely behind the barriers, putting his rifle at rest at his side (but keeping a hand on it, like always).

"Klaus, that's not funny!" He shouts over the gunfire. There is no response, so he says, desperately, as something he wants to believe is genuine but is probably just a weak attempt to convince himself that it's not real, "Stop joking around!"

Evan as he says it, he doesn't believe it, and Klaus doesn't move.

But Dave's heart does, more than he ever thought possible, moving up, higher into his ribcage, grappling even higher to latch onto his collarbones. It leaves grooves from its claws in his bones, painful and permanent, and it doesn't stop, clawing itself up into the base of his throat and into his esophagus, choking him, suffocating him, and air can't move past it and into his throat, but there is no air anyways, no air in the entire world, nowhere, none at all, and he can't breathe, there is nothing at all in his aching lungs and oh, god, he can't  _ breathe- _

_ And neither can Klaus. _

It hits him like a truck, and Dave lunges towards him, fingers curling tightly into the fabric on his arms, and Klaus is  _ heavy,  _ lighter than most of the bodies Dave has ever had to move but heavier than Klaus has ever been.

"Klaus," he says, and bullets fly around his head. He pays no mind to them, and then Klaus- Klaus's body?- no, not yet, he thinks, it's still  _ Klaus,  _ because his chest moves erratically from where he's now sprawled on his back, and his eyes are wide and rolling back and forth, and one of his hands jerks and clenches in the air, grasping at something that isn't there, or maybe just something Dave can't see.

And then Klaus chokes, like Dave so desperately felt like  _ he  _ was, like he still feels he  _ is,  _ but where Dave's suffocation was caused by the lack of air in his throat, Klaus's is wrought by the presence of blood in his, bubbling up in his mouth and dribbling over his lips ( _ soft, soft lips, softer than anything Dave has ever felt before, pressed up against his own). _

"Oh, god, Klaus," Dave breathes, and his hands come up to hover over Klaus, flitting back and forth, hesitating, because Klaus looks so fragile here, and he fears that the slightest touch will shatter him, that it will send shards of him scattering all across the A Shau Valley.

So instead, he shouts,  _ "MEDIC!" _

He  _ screams  _ it once, twice, three times, four, and his throat is already raw and rough but he doesn't care, because he needs a  _ fucking medic. _

He must not be yelling loud enough to be heard over the torrent of sound, because nobody comes to help him. Nobody comes to save Klaus.

It's only him and Dave, alone, and don't they know that Dave is  _ useless? _

And then Klaus meets his eyes, and Dave sees that he is afraid _. _

That isn't right, it doesn't feel right. Klaus doesn't get  _ afraid,  _ he doesn't feel  _ fear.  _ He gets frightened, yeah, and surprised and panicked and worried but Klaus doesn't get scared. There's always been an air around him that said he was aware of all the things that may happen to him, but he lived his life with such wild abandon that he would accept it all should it come his way.

So when Dave sees that look of raw, unfiltered  _ terror  _ in Klaus's eyes, he knows Klaus is dying.

Nothing short of death could turn Klaus into something so small and scared.

_ "No,"  _ he moans, and he falls forward, his forehead against Klaus's. "No, no, you can't do this! Come on, sweetheart,  _ please,  _ you  _ can't!" _

And the unfamiliar feeling of tears welling up in his eyes greets him, so different from the tears of smoke and dust, vacant of the stinging pain of ash but full of an entirely different agony.

He doesn't remember the last time he cried out of anything other than physical pain. (He thinks it might have been the night after he enlisted. He remembers telling himself it was worth it, it must be, to see the look of pride on Uncle Brian's face. He remembers asking himself whether his Uncle's pride was worth his life. He remembers pretending not to know the answer.)

The tears are hot and fast and they slide down his cheeks and they drip onto Klaus's face, mixing with the blood and dirt.

"Klaus," he says, because there's nothing else to say. Nothing else that matters nearly as much as him. "Klaus.  _ Klaus." _

He gives all of his precious few bits of air in his lungs to Klaus's name, because if he can't use them on him, there's nothing else he wants them for.

Dave's hands are slippery and wet and sticky, but he slides them up his arms and his neck and his face, and he holds Klaus's cheeks and kisses him once, twice, three times on the forehead, and then once on each of his eye lids, and then once on his nose, and finally, very, very lightly, on his lips, and he tastes Klaus's blood, sharp and coppery, and a sound tears out of his chest, something animalistic and raw and  _ ruined. _

Klaus whimpers, and one of his hands comes up to clutch at Dave's, scrambling and desperate and oh so scared, and Dave locks his fingers with Klaus's, and he can't tell for the life of him whether the violent trembling is coming from him or Klaus or maybe both of them, together, quaking and shuddering like windblown leaves in a tempest.

One of the bullets in the hail of fire clips Dave's helmet, and it's so loud that everything goes quiet, like he's underwater, every sound murky and unclear.

But it doesn't matter, because Klaus isn't talking. Dave feels his hand locked with his own and the rough prick of his stubble on his palm and his forehead touching his, and he doesn't need to hear to feel him.

That becomes his Achilles heel just seconds later, when he feels Klaus's head loll.

That becomes his undoing when the tight grip Klaus has on his hand falls limp.

Dave's ears ring, loud and monotone, and he feels, then, the precise way his lungs begin to crack and flake away, the ashes drifting up his throat and slipping out in between his teeth.

His last taste of oxygen drifts away in the breeze like a dandelion at the hands of a child.

He's still holding Klaus's hand, and somewhere, in the depths of his mind, he knows he's holding Klaus's  _ Goodbye  _ hand.

(He knows it with as much certainty as he knows how to take apart and reassemble a rifle with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back. How could he not, with how many hours he's spent looking at those tattoos, tracing the letters one by one, pressing his lips against them? They are as much a part of Klaus as his lips, his hair, his green, green,  _ green  _ eyes. He couldn't forget them if he tried.)

The crooked calligraphy feels impossibly hot, searing, branding against Dave's own palm. He's certain if he were to look, he would see a mirror image of the word carved into his skin, pink and inflamed in a welt that would scar over, leaving him with nothing but eyes that water and a memory of warmth- warmth that could have welcomed him into its arms, or swathed him till he was covered in burnt and blackened skin. It would leave him with no way to tell the difference.

Suddenly, the air tastes bitter for the irony of that tattoo, so he follows Klaus's arm down to the wrist and grabs his other one instead.

_ Hello,  _ it says to him, and he doesn't have any breath left to say it back.

★★★★★

Dave opens his eyes, and it's not like it is in books.

He isn't caught for a few seconds in a world where he's forgotten that Klaus isn't there anymore. He doesn't expect to look over to the cot to the right of his and see Klaus curled on his side or sprawled out haphazardly like he usually is.

He remembers, and he knows from the moment a conscious thought enters his brain that Klaus is-

He's-

…

Dave stares into the pitch blackness of the tent so dark he almost can't tell if his eyes are opened or closed and he only wishes he could forget.

Sounds of sleep come from some of his fellow soldiers. He knows Baileys is there because of the weird snuffling sound he always makes in his sleep, and the familiar loud, raucous snores emanate from Williams' cot, and Dave wonders how long he was asleep.

He really has no memory of the trek back to the tents- he barely remembers Anderson shoving him towards his cot, and that being all it took for him to stumble and collapse into it. From what he can remember, he was out before he even hit the surface of it.

(He doesn't think about what brought him here- he doesn't think about being dragged away from where he sat with his head on Klaus's stomach, he doesn't think about the feeling of Anderson's hands yanking at his shoulders. The sound of Anderson's voice barking  _ "Katz, move! You're still in a warzone, boy!" _ does not echo in his head. He doesn't think about it. He doesn't hear it. He doesn't remember. He  _ doesn't.) _

He blinks once, twice, three times, and then he stops counting. He sits up slowly, laboriously, and distantly he recognizes the aches and pains that pulse from different areas of his body- familiar ones, ones that have clung to him for months and months, ones that make it hard to remember what it was like to live without them, but there are pains that are new, too. He doesn't think about them. He only registers that they're there as if he were seeing them on someone else.

His ear rings like a siren, quiet enough that he only notices it now, but loud enough that now that he knows it's there, it's practically deafening. 

He swings his legs onto the ground and heaves himself into his feet. He sways, and for a moment he's doubtful that he'll manage to stay upright, but against all odds, he miraculously stays standing.

He pads as quietly as he can to the tent entrance and he tilts his head upwards to the stars.

_ "Oh, wow," Klaus breathes.  _

_ "I know," Dave says, and he can't stop a smile from splitting his lips. "As hellish as 'Nam is, we get the best view of the stars. Great sunsets, too." _

_ "Back in-" Klaus pauses. "Before, I used to live in the city. I couldn't see shit with all the light pollution or whatever." _

_ Dave looks over at him, neck craned backwards and eyes wide in wonder, and even in the dark, Dave's heart races at the beauty of him. He shoves it down recklessly- he can't let Klaus know what he thinks of him. Even if it's not what he really wants, he'd rather have this than to see the look of disgust in Klaus's green eyes if he were to find out. _

_ He tears his eyes away, and he looks at the stars. _

Dave shakes off the memories shoving at his skull and looks for the moon.

It's lower than he thought it would be- he must've slept for a few hours, at least.

He wanders back inside, and he looks at his cot. He looks at the one next to it, and he tries and tries not to remember the way Klaus would wake up in the night, thrashing and whining in fear.

Instead of collapsing onto his own cot, he finds himself standing next to Klaus's. He sits down slowly, softly, reverently, as if it's not the same make and model as his own, as if it's fragile- as if it could fall apart if he sits too quickly or moves too harshly.

His hand smooths over Klaus's poncho liner, bunched haphazardly, and he rubs one corner in between his thumb and the side of his forefinger.

It's the same as his. Everything Klaus owned was regulation, just like him.

He lifts the poncho liner and he lies down gradually, and pulls it over himself, all the way up to his chin. His hand fists in the fabric and he brings it up over his nose.

He takes a deep breath, and it smells like dirt and sweat and gun oil just like his- but this one is different, somehow. It feels softer and smoother in his hands, but at the same time, it feels exactly like his own.

It smells like him.

His cot, his pillow, his poncho liner- it all smells like him.

Dave's breath stutters and halts, and he finds himself curling, smaller and smaller, and he sits up for just a moment to wrap the poncho liner around his shoulders.

It smells just like him, and Dave almost wishes it didn't for the way it makes his heart shrivel and shake.

_ Almost. _

He loses track of the seconds, the minutes, the hours, maybe, curled under Klaus's poncho liner staring sightlessly into the dark.

He wishes he could fall asleep, but he doesn't. Not again. Apparently he can only be afforded that luxury once.

(He doesn't think about the times he laid under this liner alongside Klaus- doesn't think about that three day leave they once had in Nha Trang, when Klaus had awoken restlessly in the middle of the night to kick off the motel comfort with his feet. He doesn't think about how he'd asked,  _ "what's wrong?"  _ when Klaus had stood up to search for something, and he doesn't think about how Klaus had laid back down, poncho liner in hand, and said,  _ "the comforter was too soft. It was weird."  _ He doesn't think about how they were both too hot in the motel bed, and he definitely doesn't think about how they both inevitably slept better under the familiar nylon material.)

When the sun begins to rise, and the cool colors of twilight shed just a shred of visibility into the tent, Dave can hardly stand the thought of getting up. Just the notion of leaving this cot, the concept of leaving behind this place that smells so much like him, that has so many indents and fingerprints and marks of wear that proved that he'd been there, that Dave wasn't the only thing that wouldn't be the same now that he was gone, makes him feel like there are things crawling underneath his skin, out of reach, places he could never hope to scratch.

But then he shifts at just the right angle, and he feels something under the cot. Something solid.

He's heavier than Klaus, so his weight brings the cradle of the cot lower to the ground, but not nearly so low that it would touch the ground. So that means there's something under there.

He suddenly finds the motivation to sit up, and he rummages around underneath to find whatever object is nestled beneath the cot.

His hands find something smooth, and leather, and when he tries to pull it out, it's heavy, and he feels stupid for not remembering what it was sooner.

_ "So," Dave had said. "What's really in that mysterious briefcase of yours?" _

_ Plenty of soldiers there had personal items- a photo of a loved one, a necklace, a pair of socks that reminded them of home- but he'd never seen something as big, as bulky, as an entire briefcase- and an unnaturally thick one at that. _

_ Klaus had looked at him like a deer caught in the headlights, and pulled it closer to him, as if to protect it, or maybe just as a way to be sure it was still there. He shook the look off quickly, and then raised his eyebrows. _

_ "It's a time machine," he had said, and Dave snorted. "You know, Doctor Who style. You have Doctor Who by now, right? Yeah. Yeah, that show's super old." _

_ Dave doesn't remember it being that old, but he doesn't bring it up. _

_ "Yeah, alright, timelord. Keep your secrets." _

_ Klaus had smiled at him like there was a secret shared between them, but Dave hadn't pushed any farther than that. _

He heaves the briefcase onto the cot.

For just a moment, he feels guilty, for even considering opening what's clearly a personal thing that Klaus cherishes- for digging into something he hadn't wanted to reveal to him.

But then, he figures, if a poncho liner and this briefcase are all he has left to remember Klaus by, he deserves to find out what's inside, right?

(He hopes Klaus and his ghosts will forgive him for opening it without his permission.)

He wraps the poncho liner more securely around his shoulders- he'd always thought it was strange, how it always felt colder just as the sun began to rise than it did even in the dead of night- and he lays the briefcase on its side.

Surrounded by the smell of Klaus and the silence of the morning, he holds the briefcase in his lap.

He swallows thickly, and for some reason, his heart beats with a pulse of anxiety.

He unbuckles the latches.

And then David Katz is gone.

(Soldier records will say he was a deserter.

Only one soldier will know they were wrong.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey y'all. this is like the third Umbrella Academy fic that I've started- it's the last out of all of them, but I'm hoping to post them all at some point? Anyways. I had this idea, right, and I was like, oh i can make that sad. but don't worry!! time travel exists, and Klaus is also immortal. so dont worry. klaus isnt dead forever.
> 
> anyways, i really hope this is well recieved- ill write as often as i can amongst work and school, but theres not currently a schedule. well see how it goes. idk. drop a comment!! tell me what you thought!! if theres any glaring issues, please let me know (also i barely proofread this so comment any typos and whatnot if youd like). i love you guys. have a gucci day babes


	2. how the bright sun shone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave is not in Vietnam.
> 
> Definitely not.
> 
> He doesn't know where he is, but it is not Vietnam.

_Blue._

_There's only blue._

_Everywhere, everything, inside and out, is blue._

_Even he is blue- he is no one, he is nothing, except for blue._

_He feels as if he has been wiped out of existence, shoved and stretched and pulled through the fabric of reality. He has no body. He's crushed between atoms, barely dodging electrons from all directions, and they are blue, too._

_He thinks, probably, this is what death is. An existence so small and complicated that it boils down to the mere atomic makeup of matter- an existence so small that he wonders if he ever existed in the first place, or if it was all a fantastical dream that he constructed in his mind to cope with the agony of inexistence._

_And then, suddenly, he's real again._

★★★★★

Dave is not in Vietnam.

Definitely not.

He doesn't know where he is, but it is not Vietnam.

★★★★★

He's on a bus. (He thinks?)

It's bizarre- he doesn't know if it's the fact that the only buses he's been on in months, years, maybe, are the buses they're all loaded onto when they have to transport to another base, but something about this bus doesn't seem right.

It's unfamiliar.

There's only one other person on the bus- an elderly man with a newspaper who eyes Dave every few seconds and then acts like he's being discreet about it- and even he looks off. Dave opts not to look at him.

Dave sets the briefcase onto the seat next to him and pulls Klaus's poncho liner tighter around his shoulders. (It's not cold, but something in Dave pales in fear at the thought of it slipping off of him.)

Somehow, Dave manages to avoid thinking about what in the fuck is actually going on. Instead, he stares absentmindedly across the bus aisle, and listens to the incredibly bizarre music that he can hear playing over the ringing that still warps in and out of his ears (though he can't seem to find the speakers).

He resolutely refuses to think about where he is, and for once, he actually succeeds.

Eventually, he figures he'll have to get off the bus- so he grabs the briefcase, adjusts his poncho liner, and he leaves.

He walks down the steps of the bus in a daze. He doesn't think, doesn't process, he just walks, and eventually, his arm begins to ache with the weight of the briefcase- but aside from that, as far as he's concerned, there hasn't been any indication of time passing. Nothing to say that time even moves at all, or ever has moved, ever _will_ move.

He's beginning to doubt if time even exists at all.

At some point, he comes across a park. It's standard enough, with benches and trees and soft, green grass- it looks peaceful, and it's mostly empty, aside from a few people scattered, with a lot of space between them.

Before he has time to consider otherwise, he finds himself entering. He doesn't know where he's going, but he sits on a small hill, settling into the grass. It's soft, and tame, and it ruffles gently, soothingly, as he sits. He runs his hands over it (which he notices are covered, still, in dry, rusty blood. He doesn't think about it.), and the sensation sends a shiver running through him.

He looks up at the sky, and he thinks of his mama, and his sister, Sarah. Somewhere in his subconscious, he realizes that he probably won't see them again- maybe it was the style of the bus, or the weird clothes he'd seen people wearing, but something instinctual and reflexive tells him that wherever he's been taken to, they haven't been taken there with him.

(He's not so upset about the loss of his dad. Five years before, he probably would've included Uncle Brian with his mother and sister- now, though, he's come to reside in a place of resentment for Dave. It's not his fault, really- or maybe it is. Dave doesn't know. All he knows is that as horrible as it is to say it, he's not upset at the thought of never seeing him again.

He doesn't think about Klaus.)

He lays on the grass for a while. Hours, maybe. Probably. The sun has moved considerably from where it was when he first arrived, casting a warm, red-gold hue onto the trees.

His stomach aches with hunger, by now, but the feeling is distant, detached. The whole world feels fake- Dave feels like he's an apparition, outside of it all. He can't be seen, and he can't change anything.

He feels incapable. Incapable of moving, incapable of living, of doing basic things that should be easy- like eating, sleeping, breathing.

He feels incapable of feeling.

Really, he thinks the last time he really felt anything was when Klaus- when he-

He-

A flicker of emotion pricks like a thistle on the edges of his mind, and then the doors slam shut, and he doesn't feel it anymore.

(Going by the slight aftertaste that lingers behind his eyes, he doesn't really think he'd rather have felt it, anyways, so he doesn't consider it a loss.)

So instead of trying to live, or breathe, or feel, he chooses to lose himself in the clouds, and admires their golden edges as they drift slowly, undisturbed, miles and miles above the earth, and he wishes he were there, too.

It's how he feels, anyways.

★★★★★

_"As reported earlier this week, billionaire and founder of the vigilante group known as the Umbrella Academy, Reginald Hargreeves, unfortunately passed away….."_

Dave stops.

He turns around.

In front of him is an electronics store, and in the windows are some (very, very strange) TVs, lined up and in sync playing the same news segment.

They're all huge, he notes, and they all seem to completely lack the box area that TVs usually have- the screens are huge, but they're tiny at the same time. They look thin, and easily breakable- how all of them manage to be so thin _and_ to be colored is beyond him.

If he weren't so distracted by the words the news anchor was saying, maybe he'd be a little bit more hung up on that.

"Are you alright, dear?" Asks Beatrice, from a few feet ahead- she must've noticed he'd stopped following her.

( _He'd met her at the park._

_The wind had swept away a number of pages she'd been writing on- a letter, she'd said, and a few of them had billowed over to his spot. He hadn't gotten up, but he'd collected those within reach and caught some additional pages that came flying thereafter, and between the two of them, they had been rounded up rather quickly._

_The little old woman had thanked him- though he hadn't done much- and said, "Do you plan on staying here all night?" And when he'd looked at her, disoriented and confused, she'd clarified, "you've been here for hours. Do you have a place to stay?"_

_He'd only noticed right then the sight he must make- army fatigues, covered in dirt and grime, his hands absolutely covered in dried, flaking blood. The blood was probably disguised by the sheer amount of filth on his arms, but still, he looked far out of place among the other people here. He couldn't help but wonder how she had the courage to approach him, with how he looked._

_Then, he'd realized she probably thought he was just homeless, or something, which he guesses isn't false, but it's also not the full truth._

_"No." She hmms, and then extends a hand to him. He looks from her hand to her face, studying, and he decides that with as old as she is, even if she did somehow have bad intentions, he could fight her off if necessary. Besides, the only thing her expression told him was indecision and worry._

_So he takes her hand, and stands, pulling the poncho liner with him. "Thank you, ma'am."_

_"Oh, no, no, my name is Beatrice," she'd waved him off. "What should I call you?"_

_He hesitates. He doesn't know why, but suddenly, his name feels like a secret- like she'll catch him in his lie and force him to reveal that, really, he isn't human at all._

_"My name is Dave," he says finally. "Pleased to meet you."_

_From then, she'd lead him away from the park, making small talk all the while. She'd then offered him to stay with her until he could "get back on his feet"- he struggled to believe that he could even do that, but regardless, he'd protested, "No, no, I couldn't."_

_She'd rolled her eyes, and said, "Well at least let me pay for you to stay the night in a motel or something."_

_He'd protested that, too, but she wouldn't hear of it._

_So there they were- Beatrice leading him to a motel she'd said wasn't that shady, and promising to pay for at least a few nights, no matter how hard he argued.)_

"Oh- yes, ma'am, I'm fine," he says, and the wrinkles on her forehead deepen.

She frowns, and she hobbles a few feet towards him. "Now, don't you go doing that! Don't think I won't recognize a plain white lie when I see one."

He smiles at her, soft and charming, the same smile that got him apple pies every Christmas back when he was younger, from Lisa down the road. _"Quite the charmer, yes you are,"_ she'd tell him, back when he wasn't even tall enough to ride the biggest rollercoaster at the fair. _"A handsome young man, with those beautiful baby blues. Oh, and those dimples!"_

"You don't need to be worrying about me, ma'am."

"I don't _need_ to do most things, boy," she scowls, and though he's known this woman for hardly more than an hour or two, he knows the callous demeanor she puts out is a false front. He can sense it. He'd always been able to sniff out the intentions buried underneath the face like a bloodhound, and Beatrice absolutely _reeks_ of altruistic kindness. "I don't _need_ to do taxes-"

"Did you just compare asking after my well-being to doing your taxes?" 

"-but it's _still important._ Do you hear me?"

He stares, mouth dry all of a sudden, and he blinks.

And then his heart seizes, as if some ghost has personally thrust their fist through the muscle and sinew of his chest to clutch at it, and it refuses to let go, no matter how violently the vital organ thrashes.

Something about so simple a question- _are you alright?-_ seems to deal significant damage to the fragile and tenuous wall that keeps him from thinking about-

About-

_About nothing._

Suddenly, that persistent knocking at the frayed edges of his mind grows louder and louder, and it feels like a punch to the throat, the way he suddenly can't breathe, the way his chest tightens and pressure builds beneath his eyes.

But just as soon as it came, it's gone.

"Yes, ma'am."

"What have I said about all of that _nonsense?"_ She grumbles, but her lips quirk up at the corners. "Call me _Beatrice."_

"No, ma'am," he says, and she gives him a look. "My mama raised me with manners."

She scoffs and mutters under her breath for a few seconds, and then says, "Let me ask again, then, since you seem so determined to forget." She seems to dig her metaphorical heels into the ground. "Are you alright?"

He stares at her, and resolutely ignores the hitch in his breath. Then, his mind goes back to the TV.

He turns his eyes back, and they've moved on to discussing something about one of the siblings- Vanya Hargreeves, apparently, and her book, which just goes to further prove his theory.

He turns back to Beatrice, and he says, "If you don't mind me asking, what's the date?"

She's taken aback, understandably, at the abrupt change in subject. "March twenty something- 26th, or 27th, maybe? Why?"

Hmm. "And the year?"

She stares at him for a few moments- probably trying to gauge whether or not he was messing with her, but eventually, she sighs and says, "2019."

He sucks in a breath, because although, somewhat, he'd known he wasn't in 1968 anymore, he didn't think it was _that_ drastic. Where were the flying cars? The hoverboards? The holograms?

And then he remembers Klaus, saying, _"It's a time machine. You know, Doctor Who style. You have Doctor Who by now, right? Yeah. Yeah, that show's super old."_

It makes sense, now, why he would've said it was old, if he really was from _twenty fucking nineteen._

" _Time machine_ ," he breathes.

"What?" Beatrice asks, bewildered.

"Oh, nothing. Nothing important." She looks at him doubtfully. "Say, you wouldn't happen to know how far the Umbrella Academy is from here, would you?"

He expects her to say something like _oh, a few states,_ or, _it's on the other side of the country._ Instead, she looks impossibly confused, and says, "Where have you been, boy?"

It's his turn to be confused, now, and he opens his mouth to speak (though he doesn't know what he'd say), but she beats him to the punch. "You're not one of those poor kids, are you?" She says, and then mutters, "Actually, that would explain quite a lot."

"What?" He says, because of all things, that's not what he expected.

"You don't look like that one with the knives- maybe that other one, what is it, the Ouija? Oh, no, not that- the Séance, I think." He stares. "No?" He blinks. "Oh, you must be that strong one- the one on the moon?"

She stares at him, and he doesn't know what to say. So instead, he just says, " _What?"_

She realizes she's got it wrong, then. "So you're not, then. My granddaughter was _obsessed_ with them when she was little- bought all the comics, watched all the news clips a billion times. She even had all those action figures."

And then, he gets what feels like a series of flashbacks in a film reel, of laying in Klaus's cot late at night, and listening to him whisper about his siblings, and his father, and all of the adventures they used to go on.

He'd thought they were just tall tales- storytelling was a popular past time, in Vietnam. People would gather around in big clumps and listen to one person spin tales of grandeur for them all to keep in their brains and ponder over. He figured that was all Klaus was doing- giving his siblings superpowers as a way to make it fantastical and interesting, while keeping the parts of his real siblings back home to remember them by.

The only thing that seemed to go with them that he'd wholeheartedly believed was that Klaus could see ghosts, and that was only because of the way Klaus unerringly and unnervingly knew where every stray landmine was before they could step on it, the way he could tell when they were walking into an ambush. It was only written in stone when Klaus had shook his head, frantically muttering, _no, no, Arnold, you aren't supposed to be here yet. Why are you here? Stop it!_ And hours before they'd gotten the news, Klaus had already told Dave that he was dead.

He remembers every word of those stories.

The time travel, the super powers, everything- and so far, more than one of them have been indicated, if not proven, to be true.

And if they were true, then the story Klaus had told about their father's death and the gathering of their siblings was true- and that meant they'd be in that house.

Including the time travelling brother.

"I thought, maybe, even, you were that one teleporter that went missing- suddenly found. It would explain why you asked what _year_ it was. Wouldn't that be just crazy?" Beatrice continues. "If you aren't one of them, why are you looking for the academy, anyways?"

He hesitates, but then says, "I'm just… looking for someone."

She looks at him with a growing pool of uncertainty behind her eyes, but relents. "Well, lucky for you, we're about ten minutes away."

He thinks that's the first stroke of luck he's had in quite a long time.

★★★★★

"You're _absolutely certain_ that you don't need me to pay for a motel? Even for just one night?"

"Yes, ma'am," he says, and gives her a smile. "That's alright, really. You don't need to do that."

She frowns at him, a worried stitch between her eyebrows, but seems to come to some sort of conclusion. She grabs her purse from where it sits on the floor of the cab and ruffles through it for a second, eventually coming up with a small, torn off scrap of paper, and a pen. She scribbles on it for a moment, and passes it to him. "Here's the number for my landline," she says. "If you ever need anything, it's there."

He holds the paper in his hand, and for some reason, the simple kindness she's shown him really has him choking up a little bit. Just a little bit. Just so that there's a tiny lump in his throat, and his chest feels heavy, and he doesn't know how to explain to her how doomed he would be if she hadn't offered him her time.

"Thank you," he says, and he decides from the look in her eye that it was probably enough.

So they bid their farewells, and Dave gets out of the cab- which, like most things in the future, is weird and smoother than he's used to in a lot of ways- briefcase and poncho liner in hand.

He reassures himself that this is the right place with the letters on the gates and the iron umbrellas on the doors, which he can see even in the dark under the street lights. After opening one side of the gates, he knocks firmly on the door, and he waits.

Nerves begin to creep into his chest, slowly dragging a film over his ribcage, making him feel uncomfortable and restless. After a few moments pass by with no answer, he knocks again.

This time, it's only a few moments till somebody opens the door.

In the doorway is a woman, and if Dave weren't so…. _This way,_ he thinks he would've been knocked off his feet from how beautiful she is. He almost is, anyways- she's slim and tall, and she wears a dress that reminds him of something his mama used to wear on Sundays. There's not a single blemish on her pale skin, and she stands with perfect, graceful poise. Her blonde hair has the most perfect curl to it that he's ever seen, not a hair out of place, falling elegantly, almost so flawlessly that it seems artificial.

No, not almost- it _does_ seem artificial.

"Can I help you?" She says, and even her _voice_ is the perfect pinnacle of every woman he'd ever seen on TV who had men falling over themselves for her.

It's strange, though- like her hair, there's something weird about the way she talks, and moves. As she stands, looking at him expectantly, she does not sway, or shift on her feet. He can't even find the expansion of her rib cage, or a twitching of the kind smile on her face.

There's just something calculated about her. Almost mechanical.

 _Right,_ Dave thinks.

_Robot mom._

"Hello," he says, and for some unknown reason, his voice shakes. "My name is Dave."

"Alright," she says gently, smile still firmly in place. "What can I do for you, Dave?"

"I'm, uh- I'm a-"

He hesitates.

He remembers Klaus telling him that, in the future, being _that way_ wasn't as big of a deal as it is in 1968. He remembers him saying that they could walk down the street and not worry about who saw them holding hands. He remembers him saying that attacking somebody for it was illegal. He remembers him saying that they could get _married,_ even.

But he wonders how much of that is exaggeration and how much of it holds true.

A spike of anxiety settles in his gut, and even if he doesn't think that someone would program a negative reaction to homosexuality into a robot, he isn't _certain._

"-I'm a friend. Of Klaus's."

Suddenly, her smile gets brighter, and her eyes light up. She becomes animated, and her shoulders rise just a little bit, her hands clasping in delight. She sways, and her skirt swishes around her knees.

Suddenly, it becomes aot more difficult to see that she's not completely human.

"Oh, that's wonderful!" She says- and then, though her posture is kept the exact same, her expression the same shape, there seems to be a sort of melancholy in the way she holds herself. Something wistful in her eyes. "Klaus has never had many friends- I'm so glad to see that he has somebody."

And oh, boy, isn't _that_ a punch to the chest.

And that's the exact moment he realizes that it's more than likely that he'll have to tell her that her son is-

Her son is-

Gone.

Knowing that she's a robot doesn't make that thought any easier to bear.

"Come in, come in," she says, and she moves to the side to allow him to enter.

She smiles at him, sweet and soft, and he marvels at the fact that she isn't just like him- real and human and flesh and blood. "I'm Grace," she says. "I'm Klaus's mother."

"I'm very pleased to meet you, ma'am," he says, because his mama really did teach him his manners.

And if it's also a little bit because this is Klaus's mother, and he wants her to like him, well. 

There's not really a reason for that anymore, is there, so he chooses not to think about it.

"Oh, you're so sweet," she says, and something about the way she delicately presses a hand to her chest and smiles at her with a look in her eye that says she knows more than she appears reminds him of his own mother.

 _God._ He misses his mom.

"Thank you very much," he says to her, and the smile he gives her hurts.

And then, someone else comes down the hall, and Dave's sense of reality becomes even more shattered than it already was.

"Who is this?" An elderly, aged voice asks, and god, Dave knew that Klaus had said they had a talking chimpanzee as a mentor (of sorts) but it did _not_ under _any_ circumstances prepare Dave for the way his heart jumps and glitches in fundamental confusing at seeing him talking in perfect fluency, let alone with an English accent, like he's a normal person.

It's _eerie._

It makes him feel like he's in some sort of Sci-Fi TV show with impossibly good effects.

He walks with a limping gait, cane in hand, and he looks over at them with a curious gaze.

He looks kind.

Grace turns towards him- Pongo? No- and says, unerringly kind smile still in place, "This is Dave. He's a friend of Klaus's!"

And then, Not-Pongo's face falls into an expression of stern disappointment, a deep frown etching his face.

He's literally a chimpanzee, and yet, Dave finds himself shrinking beneath that smoldering dismay, and he feels crippled for reasons he can't explain.

It's just so _parental._

"If you are one of Klaus's…. _Friends_ , then I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave."

Dave balks, and suddenly, he feels an overwhelming wave of dizzying nausea come over him, and he thinks, _oh, god, Klaus was exaggerating it all._

But… he hadn't given any indication that he was… _like that_ with Klaus.

He wonders if, somehow, they can see it on him. If they can just…. _Smell_ the fairy on him.

But he's a better actor than _that,_ at least- he can afford himself that one pride. He hasn't managed to make it thirty years as gay man out of _luck._

So he plays dumb.

"I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean?"

"Unfortunately, I cannot condone Klaus's… _habits_ , while he is here." Okay, Dave wouldn't exactly consider being gay a _habit,_ but alright. "I would rather not welcome one of his dealers or whatnot into the academy.

"I-" Dave blinks, hard, and he jolts backwards in bewilderment. _"What?"_

"You are one of his dealers, aren't you? Or you otherwise assist him in obtaining illegal substances?"

And Not-Pongo looks so certain that this is what's going on, _resigned_ to it, and although Dave has lied about their relationship plenty of times before for their own safety, he would never boil it down to _dealer and customer,_ even for an act, and he struggles to come up with a reason why _drug dealer_ would be the first conclusion you would jump to when somebody says they're your son's _friend._

 _"No!_ No! Why would you think- I- _no."_

And Grace lingers by, and a delicately crestfallen expression has settled on her face- not quite _disappointed_ like Not-Pongo's, but like she had had good news yanked out from under her feet and was left with nothing but hollow expectation.

And then, he remembers the pure joy in her face and her body when he'd said he was Klaus's friend, and then he hears her words from before echo in his mind- _"Klaus has never had many friends."_

And then he remembers Klaus, late at night in the jungle, telling him- vaguely, but telling him- about how he'd been addicted to drugs for something like thirteen years, and how it had lead to homelessness and a lack of any and all connection to anybody outside of that world. 

(He'd later mentioned his brother, Ben, and how he was the only one who stuck by him through all of that time. He'd mentioned even _later_ than that that Ben was a ghost. If he hadn't seen firsthand the way Klaus knew things only ghosts could know, he would have doubted the strength of his sanity. He probably would've assumed it broke around year six of addiction.)

His mother and Not-Pongo assume he's a dealer because they really believe that Klaus doesn't have the capacity to _have_ friends who aren't.

Maybe, before Klaus arrived in Vietnam, they would've been right to believe so.

(It doesn't help that he's filthy, and might look the part of a homeless drug dealer with the inordinately large briefcase he carries.)

"I'm Klaus's _friend._ " He looks from Grace to Not-Pongo, and their expressions don't change. "I _care_ about him. He means-"

He stutters and stops, because really, he should be saying _meant._ But he decides that now is not the time to break the news that Klaus is- is _not here_ anymore, not while he's still trying to convince them that he's more than just a dealer to Klaus.

"He means a lot to me."

Not-Pongo's face softens- Grace's holds steady, so he supposed she's holding out for a verdict.

"And I'm _not_ a dealer. I don't- I've never done drugs, okay? Not even grass."

Not-Pongo observes him for a moment. His gaze is searching, studying, and Dave begins to feel like a bug under a microscope, or a puzzle that needs solving. He doesn't know what Not-Pongo is looking for, but evidently, he finds it- or, depending on what it is, he _doesn't_ find it. But either way, he's frown turns into a small, _small_ smile- and it's still bizarre to see such human expressions on a chimpanzee, but Dave finds he's quickly adjusting.

Not-Pongo looks hesitant, but hopeful- and in comparison to the pure disappointment from earlier, Dave considers that a win.

And Grace has reverted back to her hopeful joy, and god, he hadn't realized how distressing it was to see her upset.

Maybe he's projecting his own mother onto her a little _too_ much.

"....Alright," he says, and hobbles towards him. "If what you say is true, then it brings me unimaginable joy to know that Klaus has found somebody who cares for him."

A spark of pride ignites in Dave's chest, but it's quickly snuffed out by the huge, looking shadow that fills the rest of him.

"My name is Pogo." Oh, _Pogo!_ "It's a pleasure to meet you." _Pogo_ extends his hand, seemingly unphased by the dried blood on his hands (even if it might just look like dirt). Dave shakes it like he would anyone else's, and if his sense of what's real and what's not isn't completely and utterly destroyed by the end of the day, he'll consider that a miracle.

"Dave," he says. "Likewise."

"I'm not quite sure where Master Klaus is. I don't believe he's in the house at the moment," Pongo says, and Dave realizes he probably thinks that he's here to _look_ for Klaus.

Little does he know that Dave knows exactly where he is, and it's miles and countries and oceans and _decades_ away. 

Little does he know that Dave knows he's not coming back.

"Oh, no, that's alright," he says. "Uh- Klaus told me to wait for him here. He said he'd be back later."

And _that,_ well- _that's_ a full out lie.

But really, Dave doesn't want to be kicked out. He doesn't want to be forced to call Beatrice- he'd definitely rather just sleep in some abandoned alleyway and risk being stabbed to death in his sleep, to be honest.

Of course, he _could_ just tell him what happened. 

But Dave himself is still so far up his own ass in denial- he can't even _think_ about it, or say the word. He can't even _say_ that Klaus is d-

Klaus-

Well. Case in point.

He doesn't think he's in very good shape to break the news to _somebody else_ when he hasn't even quite managed to break the news to himself.

So he decides it can wait for tomorrow.

"I see," Pogo says, and he looks a _bit_ skeptical- understandably so, especially considering the Umbrella Academy is a famous place and they've probably had people trying to worm their way in here all the time.

But he guesses not many people say they're _Klaus's_ friend. Probably, like, Allison's, or Diego's, if he remembers which siblings are which from Klaus's stories.

Grace then takes over, offering to show him where he can stay while he waits. She takes off at a steady pace towards one of the multiple staircases he's already seen upon being in this house for less than five minutes, and he follows after her, tossing an "it was nice meeting you!" over his shoulder to Pogo as he goes.

"We have multiple guest rooms where you can stay, but if you'd like, I can show you to Klaus's bedroom instead," Grace offers at the top of the stairs.

Dave thinks for a moment, but really, there was no choice to make.

"I'd like to stay in Klaus's room, if that's alright." 

"Of course!" So she leads him to a- very strangely shaped- hallway with a multitude of doors branching off, and she heads towards one in particular- before she stops cold.

"Oh, silly me! What am I thinking?" She turns around to face him and Dave, and she shakes her head as if to clear it. He doesn't know if the sheer humanity of the action is comforting or impossibly disturbing. "You must want a bath, honey- look at you! Here, let me show you where that is."

He supposes she's right, really. The texture of dried, rusty blood on his hands and arms isn't pleasant. The reminder doesn't help, either.

He doesn't remember the last time he had a bath- most motels only had showers in them, and they're less time consuming, too, so he never really took baths.

She leads him to the end of the hallway, where a simple bathroom with a large tub resides. She leaves him for just a moment and returns with a high quality, fluffy towel in a soft seafoam green color and a few other things- she shows him how to work the temperature knobs and where the shampoo, conditioner and body wash are.

"And a change of clothes, as well," she says, and puts a simple pair of grey sweatpants and T-shirt onto the bathroom counter.

"Thank you kindly," he says, and he gives her a smile.

"Of course, darling." She smiles kindly. "Here, let me take that- I'll put it by the door to Klaus's room, so you know which one it is," she says, and holds a hand out for the briefcase. Nerves creep into his stomach at the thought of letting it out of his sight, but honestly, who's gonna steal a weird, thick briefcase for no reason? That would just be stupid. So he hands it over.

But then she reaches for Klaus's poncho liner and says, "and this, too," and the nerves he felt before spike into hot, paralyzing fear because he can't let it go, he doesn't want her to touch it, he can't let her take it, he can't, _he can't._

 _"No!"_ He rips himself away from her, hands grasped in tight, vice grips on the fabric around his shoulders, and the ringing in his ears gets louder and louder and his breathing begins to get faster and faster and _fuck,_ how was he so stupid as to forget that the world ran out of oxygen?

Just because this is a world that is fifty years older doesn't mean it's a different world.

It's the same universe, and that means it doesn't have air, either.

But he lost his lungs back in Vietnam, anyways, so what does it matter?

But really, who's to say that he ever got out? If it's really fifty years later, maybe that means they should have gotten their air back, right? But it's still gone. Who's to say he's not still huddled over Klaus's body, bullets flying overhead, lost in a dream he constructed as a way to pretend?

And the more he thinks about it, maybe the ringing in his ears isn't just tinnitus, but the whistling of artillery. Maybe the rapid pattering isn't the tap of the bathtub filling with water, but bullets, even if it doesn't _really_ sound like that- it's not as sharp, not as earsplitting, too smooth, but-

Suddenly, he's slammed back into his asphyxiated body, and Grace looks regretful and guilty as she stands carefully a few feet away from him.

It takes him ten seconds to realize that her mouth is moving, and another fifteen for the ringing to subside enough to actually hear what she's saying.

She's speaking gently, quietly and steadily, a mantra of, "It's alright, you're safe. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. Nothing can hurt you here- you're _safe."_

And she must see that he's present behind his eyes again, because she stops her repeated mantra to say, "I'm so sorry, Dave. I didn't mean to scare you."

His breath is shaky and fast, but he manages to draw himself up enough to mutter an unsteady, "it's alright," and then, a few seconds later, "I just- I would like to keep this with me. If that's alright."

And Grace nods sympathetically, as if she understands. "Of course it is," she says, voice still careful and soft, and as pathetic as it is, he finds that the tone helps to soothe and slow his breathing.

"Thank you, ma'am," he whispers.

She smiles at him, sad but kind. "I'd like to apologize again… I'll leave you to your bath. Please, if there's anything else I can do to help, I'll be around."

He nods, and she leaves the bathroom, shutting the door with a soft _click._

And Dave is alone again.

He exhales, shuddering, and he folds his clothes and the poncho liner on the counter and leaves them there, safe within his sight.

He sinks into the water, and it's hot and for a split second it _hurts-_ his skin isn't used to it anymore, and it prickles and twinges. But after a few seconds, it smooths over, and he settles into the tub with a sigh.

He takes a few minutes just to breathe.

And then he looks down at the water, and it's already beginning to change colors- a thin cloud of rusty red drifts off of his arms, and so he grabs the washcloth on the toilet lid and scrubs it away- not just the red, but the dirty from the rest of his body, too.

The water quickly turns a gross, murky brown, so he drains the water and refills it. Then, he takes the shampoo and scrubs it aggressively into his hair, working up a leather that turns the bubbles on his hands brown, too. When he rinses that out, he scrubs his neck and his face.

Now that the second batch of water has been dirtied- though not nearly as thick as the first- he drains it again, and refills it. He would feel bad for hiking up the water bill if he weren't absolutely certain that they were ridiculously wealthy, not only from Klaus's stories, but also from the absurd size of the mansion.

Looking at his body in the warm water, it looks cleaner than it has in years.

But his arms…. Somehow, they still look stained, even if not visually. He still feels as if, embedded in the skin, there's still dried blood, flaking and itching and staining.

So he scrubs at them again, rougher and harder till they're rubbed red and raw and sensitive to the touch, and he still feels like he hasn't made any progress.

So he gets out of the tub, and he dresses in the clothes Grace brought for him.

They're plain, but they're soft, and comfortable.

He takes the poncho liner and wraps it around his shoulders again, and picks up his fatigues in one hand, and ventures back out into the hallway.

True to Grace's word, she's set the briefcase by one of the doors. He lets out a breath at the sight- he doesn't know why. It's not as if he needs to go _back_ to Vietnam, or wants to, but nonetheless, cool relief fills his chest.

So he picks it up, and opens the door.

There's a lot of exposed brick and tiny, twinkling lights. It's a bit of a mess- not that it's very _messy,_ but there's a lot of clutter and knickknacks on every surface. It's just kind of insane- organized chaos, if he were to assign words to it.

The bed looks more like a nest than anything, pillows and blankets piled up, and it's just so _Klaus_ that it hurts.

He steps inside, and the window is open, so cold air flows in, flooding the room with a crisp chill.

Dave takes a deep breath in, and he feels like he's been torn straight off of earth and sent careening into the black void of space, because oh, god, the _smell._

It's just like Klaus's cot.

It smells like him, but it's _stronger_ here, he's completely surrounded and encompassed in it- in a matter of seconds, it's infiltrated his skin, his veins, his bones.

But here, it lacks the scent of dirt, sweat, gun oil. He doesn't smell fear.

It's the scent of Klaus without the terror of war.

And something about it has him crumbling, it has his legs failing him. He stumbles towards the bed, and he lies down on his side. He shakes, and his back hunches a little, curling his body so his knees come up just a bit.

He presses his cheek into the comforter, and he takes a deep breath in.

And with that inhale, saturated in the scent of Klaus (and a hint of marijuana), it seems as if every one of the things he's shoved down since… _that,_ comes tumbling out, and oh, god, it _hurts._

Suddenly, he feels as if he's been stabbed right between the ribs, and the knife is twisting, slowly, _agonizing._

It slams into him like a freight train, and he feels like he's suspended in the air. There's no ground beneath his feet- he's scrambling, falling, terrified, but as much as he feels the wind whipping into him, he never gets any closer to the ground.

An endless freefall.

And of course, his lungs haven't healed a bit, so none of the wind that he feels as he falls helps him to breathe.

So he cries, and he gasps for air, and he suffocates and he moans and he is _ruined._

The sound of his panic and grief are the only things breaking the utterly still silence of the room.

He cries, loud and ugly, and he doesn't care who can hear him. The comforter under his face is soaked with tears. He shakes with it, wracked with all of the fear, sadness, _anger_ that courses through him in that moment- as if his body can't hold it all, it's too much, he's overflowing, so it spreads into his limbs and it makes them tremble. It spreads into his head and makes it buzz. It spreads into his throat and makes him wheeze, in, out, in, out, rapid and nonstop, and it spreads into his eyes and saturates his tear ducts with all of the chemicals that build up the things he feels, in a desperate attempt to get it _out._

And eventually, his breathing slows, and the tears cease. His face feels dry and tacky as they dry.

All of the things he feels have been expelled from his body, but they sit in his brain, and they fester. He thinks they'll get infected, soon, and every step he takes and every word he speaks will rot and wither away before he has the chance to treat them.

The room is still again.

It's cold, and silent, and Dave feels like static.

So he breathes, shaky and destroyed, and he shivers beneath the poncho liner and he stares at the wall.

He's _scared._

He's never been truly _alone_ before.

But now he is, and Dave can't deny anymore that Klaus is-

Klaus is-

Gone.

(He still can't say the word.

Maybe, if he never says it, it won't be true.

He won't know if he doesn't try, right?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> howdyyyyyyyyyy. its been a long time. just kidding lmao anyways  
> here's chapter two!! i hope it's held up to yall's expectations thus far!! it's a lot longer than I expected it to be tbh- i was planning on having it be like,,, 4k, maybe a little bit more but this bastard ended up being like 7k words which isnt RIDICULOUS but still.  
> also, catch me making Dave's accent way more prominent than in canon. if you see me making him unrealistically southern, no u didnt <3  
> but ANYWAYS. sorry i didnt give you guys the siblings in this chapter, i promise they're coming next time ok  
> also i spent a FAT minute trying to figure out the timeline of the episodes, i literally looked at so many timelines and rewatched sooooo many scenes and it took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out that the day that five erased and restarted was the day AFTER klaus got back from vietnam. yeah idk why but i feel like a rocket scientist trying to figure out where all the siblings are at any given point in a day  
> also that line about no one wanting to steal a random briefcase was DEFINITELY subtweet @ klaus on my part i just wanna make sure yall know that  
> anyways ive really been talking about nothing thus far so tell me what u thought please your comments give me unmatched levels of serotonin  
> ive posted both of these chapters like right before going to work so once again let me know if theres any really bad mistakes because ive been really rushed in uploading them lmao. so yeah i love yall have a good day
> 
> (Title from Love is Blue by Marty Robbins)


	3. your hands were making artifacts in the corner of my mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Well, speaking of, might you know where here is?"
> 
> “Where do you think you are?”
> 
> And then, Klaus smells smoke. He hears gunfire. He feels the precise fashion in which a lead bullet slips in between his ribs to settle in one of his lungs.
> 
> He hears Dave. “Klaus… Klaus… Klaus.”
> 
> He blinks.

_Even in the darkest caves there is a light!_

Dave stares at the words.

He reads them again. And again. And again.

His eyes slide back and forth over the words written on Klaus's walls, and he's not sure he really agrees with them.

It's still dark outside. Dave doesn't know what time it is, but if he had to guess, he thinks the sun would probably be rising in an hour or so.

But that's just a guess. There's no clock in this room, and Dave hasn't had an intact sense of time and its passing since he landed on that bus fifty years in the future.

He hasn't been able to sleep at all, no matter how long he lays still with his eyes closed, no matter how much his exhaustion runs bone deep. It's been at least 24 hours since he'd slept last, and that had only been for, what- two hours? 

So Dave lays in Klaus's bed, eyesockets aching horribly, and he reads the hundreds- thousands, maybe- of words on Klaus's walls.

He reads them, and he wonders what he was thinking when he wrote them. He wonders what was going on in that enigmatic head of his to spark that specific phrase. He wonders how old he was. Where he got the pens he wrote with. What they meant. He wonders what gave Klaus these ideas, and why Klaus thought, _I have to write this down._ He wonders which ones are the most important to him.

He'd never really seen Klaus's handwriting before- it's chicken scratch, the kind of handwriting his middle school English teacher would've scowled at him for. It's untidy and all over the place and kind of unintelligible in some places, only decipherable, probably, by Klaus himself.

Or maybe, not even he knows. Maybe, when Klaus laid in this bed and looked at that writing, he couldn't read it either- maybe he was left grasping at straws, scrambling at the memory in a desperate attempt to get a strong enough hold to remember what he was thinking, feeling, what words he was trying to imprint permanently on the physical world, only for it to slip away. Maybe, the only one who knows for sure what is written there are the walls themselves- heavy and laden with the knowledge of the secrets only they and time itself remember.

He wonders if the Klaus he knows would've written any differently.

He wonders if Klaus wrote it at a time when he was feeling particularly optimistic. He wonders, maybe, if Klaus wrote it when he needed someone, anyone, to tell him that things could be alright. He wonders if Klaus got tired of waiting for someone to tell him it would be okay, so he told himself, instead.

So he stares at the words right in front of his face, and he wonders.

_Even in the darkest caves there is a light!_

It's not a sentiment the Klaus he knows-

_Knew-_

-would really choose to pick up.

A spider crawls, slowly and spindling, on the wall. It comes to rest over the word " _light!"_ written in blue scrawl.

Dave stares at it, and for a second, it feels as if it stares back.

When Dave was younger, he used to be scared of spiders- terrified, really, to the point where even spiders smaller than the tip of a pencil would have him running to his mama for her to get it out.

When he first arrived in Vietnam, though, he had to get over that fear quickly- the spiders there were bigger and deadlier than any he'd ever seen before, and they liked the jungle a lot. He'd once woken up in the morning to find one underneath his poncho liner, having crawled in at some point in the night.

When he was younger, he would never let his mama kill it- she would trap it with a cup, and he'd slide a piece of paper between the wall and the cup, and he'd make her deposit it outside the house, no matter how small and tedious it was.

He watches the common house spider climb on Klaus's wall, and he doesn't feel anything.

There's a window right there. There are multiple pieces of paper within arm's reach for him to scoop it up and let it outside.

He stares at it, and it stares back.

He crushes it beneath his hand in under a second.

He doesn't want to wipe the spider residue on Klaus's bedsheets, so he wipes his hand on his sweatpants instead.

(And if he feels the slightest spark of guilt over the fact that there's a leg or two still stuck to Klaus's writing, it's not over the dead spider.)

He starts to think, then, about how far Klaus's powers go- does he only see the ghosts of people, or does he see dogs and cats, too? Does he see dead bugs? Does he see billions and trillions of flies, mosquitoes, wasps, moths, constantly buzzing and flying around, unaware that they're no longer alive?

Dave figures he must not, because he wouldn't have lasted a day in the jungle not knowing which spiders, snakes, and centipedes are real and which aren't. He'd go insane.

But then, Dave thinks, who says he wasn't anyways? He saw ghosts in a place where the ground itself was soaked in death. He struggles to imagine what it would look like if all of the dead walked among them.

So maybe Klaus _was_ insane.

It's not as if the rest of them could claim full sanity at that point either, though, so what difference did it make?

He certainly thought he was probably a little further out when Klaus told him about his _ghost brother,_ though.

And then, he thinks, _ghost brother._ Klaus had told him that Ben wasn't there with him- and now that he knew Klaus wasn't joking about all the stories he told of the future, and the time traveling briefcase, he knows that must mean that Ben didn't travel with him. That means Ben is _here_. Ben is probably watching Dave, wondering who this man is, who came into his house and is now in his brother's bed, wondering where his brother has been for the last ten months, and if he has anything to do with his brother's disappearance.

(Or maybe it's vain to think that out of all the things in the world Klaus's brother could be doing, he'd choose to watch Dave.)

And maybe _Dave_ is the insane one, for believing in a ghost brother anyways.

But Dave just traveled fifty years in the future. He thinks ghost brother isn't that big of a leap from there, right?

 _"Ben was the only one who was there for me,_ " he'd said. Later, when he'd told Dave that he wasn't alive, he'd said, _"Even if he had no choice but to be."_

But Ben had saved Klaus's life, according to him. He'd been Klaus's lifeline (as ironic as it is) for years and years, when nobody else considered it worthwhile.

If anybody deserved an explanation, it was him.

"Hey," Dave says, sitting up to lean against the headboard. "Uh, Ben? I don't know, uh, if you're listening, or if you can hear this, but… I… I feel like you need to know what happened. To Klaus."

The room is completely silent, and nothing happens. Not that Dave expected anything to happen, really- no doors swinging open or flickering lights.

But the air does seem to thicken, just barely buzzing with some slight energy, and the white noise that Dave hadn't realized he could hear suddenly drops away, leaving him nothing to hear but silence and the quiet ringing that still plagues his ears.

Or maybe, Dave is just looking for what he wants to see, and the AC just turned off.

"I- I just… You were really important to him. He talked a lot about how much he missed you, and how weird it was not to have you there… he said- he said you-" _He was so annoying, but he meant the most to me out of everyone._ "You meant more to him than anybody. And I don't think he'd want you to be left in the dark."

Dave takes a deep breath.

"He time travelled. I don't know what happened before, or how he got it, but he had a briefcase that let him time travel. You probably already knew that, since you've been with him for years, but. Yeah. He, uh, landed in the war. In 'Nam. In 1968. It must've been an accident- I don't know why he would go there on purpose, so maybe he put it on the wrong setting or something. I don't know how it works, but I know he was right shocked when he first arrived." 

And then, Dave figures, if any kind of ghost _is_ listening, they're probably yelling _get to the point!_ right in his face, through vocal chords that aren't made with matter, and thus project phonons that cannot enter his ears- phonons that can only enter _Klaus's_ ears.

"He, uh. He's. I- um," Dave begins. "The, uh…. I'm so sorry, gimme a second."

And so he breathes for a second, and tries to think of a way to explain what happened to Klaus without actually having to say the words.

Funny how, just as he needs it, the air to make the phonons to make the words disappears.

So he makes words out of blood and sinew and bone, instead.

"The war got him," he spits, through unclenched teeth, but through a cloud of smoke that is suddenly in his eyes, his nose, his throat, smothering his skin and leaving a scent which he knows will linger for far longer even after he scrubs and scrubs and scrubs it away. He's sure it comes from a bonfire in his chest, burning away what's left of his chest cavity- it wasn't enough to take his lungs away. Now, they've gotta make sure they can never grow back.

"The war got him, so he's not here anymore. But I am. On accident. I've got his briefcase. So now I'm here. So I'm sorry, I'm- I'm sorry that- that he-" Dave chokes. "I'm sorry that I'm here and he's not."

Dave thinks that the grainy taste on his tongue must be the ashes of his burnt and blackened ribs.

It might even be the crushed remains of what _wants_ to come out- _I wish more than anything that I could do it again and save him like I should've the first time. I would give anything to take his place._

_I wish it was me, instead, and I know that if you're listening, you do, too._

But he doesn't want to take the focus off of what's important. Doesn't want to make it all about himself, doesn't want to be selfish and attention seeking by talking about what's wrong with himself rather than what matters.

So the words lie, crushed on his tongue, and they don't come out. But they're there, and they infect his mouth with the bitter taste of regret and self loathing.

"I'm so sorry," he mutters, and at those words, the pressure in the air vanishes. The room is still dead silent, but now, Dave thinks he's alone again.

★★★★★

Dave wakes up to knocking on Klaus's door.

"Klaus?" He hears a man's voice call from the other side. He doesn't respond, because he's still trying to orient himself after waking up from a two hours of dazed half-sleep.

Apparently, whoever's knocking is unwilling to tolerate the lack of response, because the door opens, suddenly, to reveal probably the largest man Dave has ever seen in his life.

"Klaus, family meeting- woah."

Dave scrambles up in Klaus's bed, poncho liner clutched around his shoulders, still, even though he's gotten kind of hot now, covered in the heat trapping material for so long.

He stares, wild eyed, at the man. Classic deer caught in the headlights.

"Who the hell are you?" He asks, and Dave sputters for a few seconds, because how does he even begin to explain, but the man glares at him, moving in quickly, and then rolls his eyes. "Whatever, nevermind. Where's Klaus?"

"I- he's-" Dave's mind short circuits, and he doesn't know how to respond. "He's- not here. Right now. Um."

The man stares at him, and he looks so exasperated, as if he just can't believe that Dave would consider taking up his precious time like this. 

And then Dave observes him, and his weird overcoat, and the blonde hair and blue eyes and holier-than-thou glint in his eyes, and he thinks, _this must be Luther._

The man- Maybe Luther- mutters, "Forget it," and then he goes to close the door.

Before Dave has time to think about it further, he blurts, "Wait!"

Maybe-Luther halts in his tracks. "What?" He snaps waspishly.

Dave finds himself aggravated at the aggression- his mama may have taught him to be polite, but clearly the lesson didn't quite sink into Maybe-Luther's skull.

Honestly, if he's right, and this is Luther, then going off of the stories Klaus's has told of him, he's not really surprised. He'd always suspected that Klaus had withheld the worst parts of his family, anyways- with the exception of his father, of course. With all the things he'd heard about Sir Reginald Hargreeves, he'd have a hard time believing that Klaus held back.

"You said you were having a family meeting?" 

"Yeah," Maybe-Luther confirms, and when he looks at him, it's with just the _slightest_ modicum of some emotion, not quite disgust, but something like it, as if his time and issues are more important than Dave's own, like they matter more just because they're his.

Dave doesn't know what's got him so frantic, but he'd be willing to bet that what Dave has to tell him would take priority if he knew.

He hopes, at least.

"What's it to you?"

It's just so _abrasive,_ like he's _trying_ to pick a fight. It grates on Dave's nerves, and it makes him feel like his guard should be up, like the fur of a cat's spine prickling, standing up on end, hackles raised. "I just- I think it would help, if I came with you-"

"Why?" Maybe-Luther bites. "It's not like you're family- you're just one of Klaus's… I dunno, flings, I guess. Sorry. We have something really important to talk about and t's just not really any of your business."

And Dave knows, he _knows,_ that as much as Maybe-Luther knew of Klaus, he didn't _know_ him. Even disregarding time travel- even disregarding the fact that the only Klaus Maybe-Luther might have known was the Klaus of ten months ago, he can tell just by the disdain in his eyes, by the slight curl of his upper lip, that Maybe-Luther hasn't really _known_ Klaus in years. 

Maybe he's never really known Klaus at all.

But that doesn't stop the jab from hurting like a _bitch._

Like, Dave knows it wasn't like that, that he and Klaus shared something far more important than a _fling._ Maybe-Luther doesn't know what he's talking about. Maybe-Luther doesn't know _shit,_ and Dave knows that.

But to hear the time he spent with Klaus… every second of it, every tear-filled, heart-racing, thrilling, terrifying, _wonderful_ second… reduced to a _fling,_ well. 

Knowing what Dave does, it stings. It stings a lot.

And in a more general sense, it was rude of Maybe-Luther to assume he knew _anything_ about what Klaus meant to him.

Overall, Maybe-Luther seemed like a very callous, impolite man. His mama would've _hated_ him.

So Dave steels his jaw, and he glares at him- just for a split second.

He doesn't do more than that, doesn't let it leak into the way he _treats_ Maybe-Luther, because _his_ mama taught him _manners_ and _morals._

What a poor soul.

So Dave looks at him and schools his features into a docile, open expression, and says, "There's something you all need to hear about Klaus. It would be convenient to do it during a family meeting, I think."

(And Dave thinks he sounds far more like a robot in that moment than Grace ever has- it's stiff and formal and unnatural, but Dave thinks he'll explode if he doesn't hold himself so strictly, as if all the words in his throat will come spilling out if he doesn't actively hold them inside.)

And Maybe-Luther sucks in a deep breath, holding it for a moment, making him appear even more stiff and uncomfortable than he already looked, looking for all the world like he's really about to argue with Dave and he swears, he _swears,_ if he really comes at him again, Dave will lose his mind. He'll _lose it._

But then Luther lets the breath out, a resigned sigh- as if he doesn't _agree_ or _approve_ of what Dave has said, but doesn't find it worth it to argue any longer.

Dave doesn't really care, either way- beggars can't be choosers.

"Alright. But we're not waiting for you," he says.

Dave grits his teeth and nods once, and Luther leaves the room.

Dave stands, and scrunches the poncho liner into a line lengthwise to hang around his neck- it's cooler that way, seeing as leaving it was out of the question.

He goes to leave, but then he pauses.

He looks back at the briefcase on the floor beside the bed.

He doesn't know why, but he finds himself sliding it carefully underneath Klaus's bed, behind multiple other bins of art supplies, out of eyeshot. Safe.

He leaves Klaus's room, and he shuts the door behind him.

_Time to face the music._

★★★★★

It's actually kind of funny, Dave thinks, how little any of them seem to care about his presence.

He had followed Luther down the stairs into some sort of extravagant, luxurious seating area- it's more wealth than he's ever seen in his life, definitely. The throw pillow he's holding on his lap as he sits on the little couch is probably worth more than his childhood home or something ridiculous like that.

Aside from Maybe-Luther, there's only two people here- a man and a woman- and neither of them have spared him so much as a glance, and at this point he's starting to think that they _literally_ haven't noticed him sitting there, as impossible as it seems.

He's been sitting, listening to them talk, but really, half the things they're saying are going in one ear and out the other- it's confusing, and honestly he doesn't understand it. He must be missing some piece of context or something, because they can't be talking about the _literal_ apocalypse, right?

And then, he thinks, with the day he's had, maybe they really are. It'd be just his luck.

"What are you not telling us?" The man says- he's got tanned skin, and what looks like quite a big scar stretching over one temple. He's dressed…. Dave might say he was dressed like he was attending a funeral, but something about the tight fabric seems fundamentally inappropriate for such an occasion. "Come on, big boy, spit it out."

Everyone's looking at Maybe-Luther, so Dave does too, and he's making a face like a goldfish. Dave is so tired that something hysterical in him wants to laugh until he can't breathe. He genuinely doesn't know how he manages not to.

Maybe-Luther hesitates, stalls, averts his eyes, and watching somebody so big act so sheepish does not help to suppress the laugh bubbling in Dave's throat.

And then, Maybe-Luther says something, too quiet and fast for Dave to hear, immediately taking a sip of his coffee as if to act nonchalant, but he spits the syllables like they taste sour- as if it pains him even just to say it.

And then the woman says, "What was that?"

"I said, uh, we died."

 _Oh,_ Dave thinks. _What a neat segue._

He doesn't really have the urge to laugh anymore.

★★★★★

Klaus wakes up.

He had fallen asleep, but now, he is awake.

He’s struck, for a moment, by how bright it is- it was so dark, but now, there is so much light.

He pushes himself up from where he’s lying on the ground of…. A forest? Leaves and debris of all kinds stick in his hair, but at the moment, he can’t find it in him to care.

He takes a deep breath, and stalls.

It feels _weird._ He feels the air passing through his lips, feels it to the back of his throat, and then it’s gone. His chest expands, but he doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel like he’s breathing. He cannot feel his lungs, and he hadn’t really known that he _could_ feel his lungs, but now, when he can’t, it makes him feel like he’s choking.

He waits for the sensation of his chest seizing, of his lungs contracting, or that creeping feeling of panic at the realization that oxygen is no longer circulating throughout him, but it never comes.

But he still does not breathe.

He looks around, and that’s when it hits him that the world isn’t right. There’s no _color._

And he’s not saying that like he normally might. He’s not saying it like he does when he points out the mind-numbingly dull attire of a straight man in a club.

He’s saying that as in there is _literally_ no color. Everything is in blacks and whites and greys, like an old movie from the 1920s or something.

He stumbles along in the dirt, towards a path by a set of wooden fencing, and then he sees somebody.

“Yoohoo!” He says. He waves to them. 

A little girl on a bicycle stops next to him. If he weren’t in the state he is, he might’ve asked her where she got her hat. It’s kinda nice.

“Hello,” he says, and the lack of breath rising from his lungs makes him stagger just a bit over the _‘o’._

The little girl looks up at him, and when her eyes land upon him, her innocent face suddenly hardens, deadly serious. It makes him want to take a step back. He doesn’t. (He doesn’t really trust his own feet at the moment.)

“You aren’t supposed to be here yet,” she says, and her voice is cold, but it throws him for a loop because it still sounds like a little girl. But something when he looks at her tells him that she is not.

“Oh,” he says, because he cannot say anything else.

“It can’t be that time already, can it?” The little girl screws up her face, and fishes a pocket watch out of the basket on her bike. She flips it open. “No,” she says. “It’s not that time yet. You aren’t meant to be here.”

Klaus stares at her. “Well, speaking of, might you know where _here_ is?” 

Something deep in his gut tells him that she does know, that she would know better than anybody else. That she might be the _only one_ who does, who ever has, who ever will.

“Where do you _think_ you are?”

And then, Klaus smells smoke. He hears gunfire. He feels the precise fashion in which a lead bullet slips in between his ribs to settle in one of his lungs.

He hears Dave. _“Klaus… Klaus… Klaus.”_

He blinks.

“I… I’m not sure. I don’t know, I’m agnostic, so-”

“Doesn’t matter,” the girl says, and Klaus flinches for a reason he can’t comprehend. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Why?” He asks. “Aren’t you supposed to be some all seeing, omniscient being? Shouldn’t you have seen this coming from the beginning of time or whatever?”

“I am,” she says. “And I should. But I didn’t see this. Not here; not _now.”_

“Well, I think I have a little inkling on that-”

“The why really doesn’t matter. The fact of the matter is that you’re far too early; it needs to be fixed.” She looks at him like he should just understand, like it all makes perfect sense. Like he should just _pass up_ an opportunity to die.

“Oh, yeah, sorry, let me just _un-shoot m_ yself. What do you expect me to do? Besides- this has been my _dream_ since I was a kid. I mean, come on, _dead?_ Talk about shooting for the stars-”

“No. You can't stay here. Not only is this fundamentally incorrect, but, well." She sighs exasperatedly, and rolls her eyes. Who ever thought God would have so much of an _attitude?_ "I don't like you all that much."

"Well, you're God, right?" She gives him a blank look, as if to say, _and what about it?_ "Which means…. You made me, right?"

"Well, I made everything else, so I must have made you."

"Okay, so why'd you make me like this, huh?" He raises his eyebrows, and she makes a look of disdain. "Sounds to me like you gotta live with your mistakes."

She stares at him.

"It's me. I'm your mistake. I thought that was kind of of obvio-"

"I made you, but I didn't raise you. I don't make your decisions. I may have made you, but I don't like how you turned out."

Ah. A disappointment to dad, a disappointment to himself, a disappointment to his siblings, and now, a disappointment to _God._

Damn. It’s like a royal flush of disappointment.

"Yeah… me neither." He has the urge to laugh, then, because who does?

Well. Besides Dave, that is. He is an outlier in everything regarding Klaus.

And then, Klaus thinks, _Dave._ He shouldn't be arguing with- _God, holy shit, he's arguing with God-_ when Dave is still alive, down there in the A Shau Valley. He can't leave him _alone._

_(Klaus would do pretty much anything to never leave him at all.)_

So, he blinks, once.

“Okay. Fine. Whatever. Pack it up, heavenly father.”

“You are _insufferable-”_

“Yadda, yadda, yadda, you hate me, so does everyone else, you’re not special. Are you gonna keep griping, or are you gonna tell me how to un-die?”

She stares at him, and he’s shocked she doesn’t smite him on the spot. She put him in this world- she could probably take him out of it entirely, right?

“Shut up and sit down. It’ll take a moment for me to patch up a mortal gunshot wound.”

“Alrighty, you’re the boss- oh, sorry. You’re the Lord.”

God glowers, and Klaus gives her a shit eating grin.

★★★★★

Maybe-Luther gives his declaration, and the silence that falls over the room is so deep that it has Dave a little bit disoriented.

He really doesn’t know the context; something about the apocalypse, something about _Five_ (who Dave does, vaguely, remember Klaus mentioning at some point), but nothing that allows him to comprehend what they’re talking about.

But that’s not what he’s here for. He is not here to get into their family drama (for lack of a better word). He’s not part of their family; it’s none of his business, and he has no right to barge in and act like it is.

He’s just here to tell them what they deserve to know.

He opens his mouth, and simultaneously takes a breath and leans forward on the seat hahe’s on.

In the stifling silence, the _creak_ of the bench and the slight sound of his inhale is deafening.

“ _Holy shit!”_ Dave hears, and suddenly, all three sets of eyes are trained far too intensely on him.

Unfortunately, they aren’t the only things trained on him.

The other guy, dressed in all black, suddenly has a (very threatening) blade in each hand, one of which is poised back, ready to careen into him at a moment’s notice.

Dave freezes like a deer in the headlights, like all of his muscles just lock up.

 _Ah,_ thinks Dave. _So this must be Diego, then._

“Where the _hell_ did you come from!?” Maybe-Diego shouts, and he has a wild look in his eyes that assures Dave that those knives are _not_ an empty promise.

“And who _are_ you?” Says the woman, who’s less reactive than Maybe-Diego, but the look in her eyes screams that she is a _threat._

It takes an extraordinary effort to unlock all of his muscles at the sight of a deadly weapon aimed at him (even if it’s not quite the deadly weapon that he’s used to), but even when he does, all he manages to do is throws his hands up in surrender.

“Oh, he’s not a threat,” maybe Luther says, and Dave thinks that’s one of the only things he’s heard the man say that has been even remotely in his favor. “I found him in Klaus’s room- one of his one night stands, I guess.”

Anger rises in Dave’s throat. He stamps it down. At least they’re aware of Klaus’s… preferences, though. 

“Oh,” maybe Diego says, and his stance visibly relaxes. He doesn’t put away the knives, though.

The woman shifts, though, and says, “Right, but that doesn’t explain why he’s here.” She turns to Luther. “Where’s Klaus? He should be hear for this discussion, right?”

“Hell if I know,” Luther says, gesturing to Dave. “Don’t ask me, ask him.”

All three of them turn to look at him expectantly, and the anxiety that had laid dormant in his stomach suddenly rises. It’s in that moment that it really hits him that he’ll have to tell them. He’ll have to see their faces when they hear what happened. He’ll have to say it.

“Uh,” he begins. “Well-”

“Hey,” he hears, and he- and the others- turn around to see two people- a woman and a man. The woman is the one who spoke; she’s petite, with mousy brown hair, and she’s wearing multiple layers of clothing. She looks vaguely uncomfortable, standing there.

The man just gives Dave a weird feeling. Like he doesn’t want the man to look at him. He averts his attention back to the woman.

“What’s going on?” she says, and Dave assumes the other three know her, but they all hesitate.

The other woman- the tall, confident one- breaks the barrier. “It’s a… family matter.”

A look of crushed disappointment flits across her face, but it’s quickly replaced with bitter contempt. “A family matter,” she says, and she smiles, thin lipped. “So of course you couldn’t bother to include me.”

Dave is unaware of the context to this situation, but even he can tell there’s a history here of exclusion, and he listens on as Luther tries to come up with some excuse, which the girl deflects, and the tall woman tries half-heartedly to placate her.

“Really, don’t bother,” she says. “And I won’t either.”

“Vanya, that’s not fair,” the other woman says, and yeah. Klaus talked about her. He didn’t go into much detail, but he does know that she didn’t have powers like the rest of the siblings. He remembers Klaus expressing extreme jealousy about her lack of powers- how he’d always wished to trade places with her as a child.

“ _Fair?”_ Vanya spits. “There’s nothing fair about being your sister, Allison... I have been left out of _everything_ for as long as I can remember. And I used to think it was Dad's fault, but he's _dead_ .” She turns, addressing the rest of the siblings as well, fire and hurt in her eyes. “So it turns out _you’re_ the assholes.”

And then, she begins to storm away, and Dave panics. She can’t leave- she deserves to know just as much as the rest of them.

So he springs to his feet, and he walks out after her.

He catches her just before she reaches the doors- the man she’s with doubles back, but Dave doesn’t really care about him. The only sibling left would be Five, and considering Klaus told him he was a thirteen year old (but also in his mid fifties? But he looks thirteen? It was confusing) that man was definitely not him.

“Wait!” He calls after her, and she whips around like a firecracker, probably expecting one of her siblings to be coming after her.

She recognizes that he isn’t, though, and her strained expression quickly shifts to one of confusion. 

“Hello,” he begins, because he doesn’t know how else to. She looks at him, and she looks like she’s a second away from either breaking into tears or tearing him limb from limb.

He extends a hand, and she looks at it like it’s a snake about to strike.

“My name is Dave,” he says. “I’m a friend of your brother’s.”

She grimaces, and says, “I can’t even imagine the disaster that is being friends with Diego, but-”

“Oh, no, not Diego,” he says, and she tilts a head. He’s starting to feel awkward with his hand still out like this, but he doesn’t want to screw it up before he can even try to convince her to come back.

“I figured it would be hard for Luther to make friends on the moon. How-”

“Not Luther, either. I-”

 _“Five?”_ She says.

“ _No,_ I’m a friend of _Klaus’s.” Good god._

She seems taken aback, but her confusion lessens just a smidge.

She hesitates, and then takes his hand.

“I’m Vanya,” she says.

“Very pleased to meet you.” He gives her a soft smile. His mama always said he could make friends with anybody- he just hopes that holds true.

“Sorry you had to see that, back there,” she mentions, and she sounds just the slightest bit sheepish.

“Oh, no it’s alright,” he assures her. “I… don’t know much about the history between you all, but from what I do know, it seemed warranted.”

Her eyes soften ever so slightly, and she looks _tired._ Dave wonders if anybody’s ever said that to her before. “...Thanks.”

He gives her a warm smile, and she even gives him a small one in return. He feels a wave of accomplishment rush through him at that- he’s making progress.

“Listen,” he begins. “Uh. Okay. So, the only reason I’m here is because I have something kind of… important… that you and the rest need to hear. And…. I- I think, maybe, it would be best if I told you all together. I-”

“I’m _not_ going back there,” Vanya states firmly. She’s not smiling anymore, and her eyes are stone cold serious. He thinks she might be clenching her jaw by the way the muscle twinges. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, and he is. “I don’t blame you. I don’t _want_ to make you go back in there with the others, not if it makes you uncomfortable-”

“It does.”

“-but this… is something that you will want to hear. I don’t think you’ll want to hear this after they do. I really don’t want to keep you in the dark about this for any amount of time.”

She’s analyzing him like one might an incomplete puzzle. Like she knows something is missing, but not what.

“This is something that you _deserve_ to know.”

She contemplates, and she searches his eyes for something he doesn’t know. Back, and forth, back and forth, over and over, from eye to eye.

He feels scrutinized. But, eventually, she must find what she was looking for.

“Okay,” she says, and he lets out a breath of relief he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.

“Okay.”

They return to the foyer- after Vanya tells the man she was with not to wait up for her- and when they walk into the room together, the three are, again, discussing whatever confusing apocalypse they were talking about earlier.

“But I’m thinking, this is about the moon, right? Dad-”

“Luther,” Allison intervenes, and pointedly glances at Dave and Vanya.

Vanya shifts, obviously uncomfortable, and Dave feels guilt well up in him for dragging her back here just to give her bad news.

“Excuse me for interrupting,” Dave says. “Would you mind if I were to. Um. Talk to you guys, for just a second?”

“We don’t have time for this,” Luther grinds out.

Diego retorts with, “Geez, man, let him speak.”

“Thanks,” Dave mutters quietly. 

They all stare at him expectantly (with the exception of Vanyas), as if he’s wasting their time- which, you know, he probably is, he doesn’t know the circumstances- and he begins to feel panic creep into his throat.

“First of all, I am _not_ one of Klaus’s one night stands, uh. Just so you know.” He swallows thickly, and shifts on his feet. 

Fear wells up in him. They don’t know. He has to tell them. He doesn’t know how they’ll react. Will they blame him? Dave does, after all. He’s never had to break any of this sort of news to anybody before, besides when his dog was hit by a car, and he had to tell his little sister. 

But this is different.

So, _so_ different.

This isn’t like when he told Ben. He didn’t even know if Ben was _there._ He can’t just step around it forever.

But Dave can’t even _think_ the word yet. How can he manage to _say_ it?

“Uh… so…. Klaus, um. He- I-” The flow of words in his brain completely stops and stutters, like a failed car engine, and it all seems to stick in his brain.

His head feels numb. He feels light headed. He feels like he might vomit or pass out or both.

The smoke and char from his lungs return, making his mouth feel dry and chalky, like he wants to cough and cough till his throat is sore and bleeding.

But no matter how much ash rests on his tongue, no matter how little air he has to work with, they deserve to know.

He’ll have to make words out of _something._

So, in that moment, he teaches himself how to make words out of smoke rings and soot and _fire._

He takes a fistful of the poncho liner in one hand.

“...Klaus-”

But he doesn’t get to finish. The smoke dissipates, lost to the wind, the soot scattered away and the fire extinguished.

There is a cacophony of dust and noise and blue, blue light, the same blue that enveloped him when he came to the future, and suddenly, there’s a person on the bar.

There’s a _person_ on the _bar._

_And there’s a briefcase beneath them._

_“Five!?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Howdyyyyyyyyy  
> okay so it's really been a fat minute this time lmao. im so sorry. I started college classes like right after I posted the second chapter and theyre REALLY beating my ass dude  
> I did just quit my job though so! I might be broke but I also have more writing time babey  
> But anyways!! a few things about this chapter.  
> 1) there is SO MUCH content on Klaus's walls, and it's so fascinating to look at ictrues of the set and try to read all of them. it really gives some insight into how messed up the inside of klaus's mind, hut also how unbearably creative he is. it's so cool  
> 2) as for the timeline of this, it took me a while to work it out, but in this fic, Five pulled some sick deductive reasoning to figure out that Hazel and Cha Cha must have done something wrong to warrant their behavior so he took a chance and sent them that note. bc if he was wrong then really what did he have to lose you know, which is how he did that despite not getting the info from klaus that he had their briefcase. i just wanted to keep the timeline as intact as I could  
> 3) my writers block has been a BITCH lately and I literally wrote like almost all of this today, so if it sucks, don't hesitate to tell me, but also thats probably why  
> 4) i promise you will get dave telling the siblings in the next chapter. it is close. i promise. at least you got a some sibling content in this one, even if it was mostly dialogue pulled from episode six. but that WILL change next chapter, I just had to set everything up for next chapter  
> 5) was characterization alright so far?? im SCARED of doing it wrong :D  
> anyways, though, I would absolutely die for everybody who has read this story. Y'all give me so much serotonin, it's ridiculous. Please leave comments if you want, they seriously make me so happy.  
> I hope you guys like this one, and i hope it was worth the wait :')) if its not though please tell me. i will seriously rewrite the whole thing if you guys wanted me too.
> 
> But anyways!!! i love you so much everyone have a good day
> 
> (title from Mary by Big Thief)


	4. we spend our time wishing, and soon our life is gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Well- happened to him? What happened? Is he alright?” Vanya asks, and her hands are clasped together, twisting. She looks nervous. She always has, but she looks towards him with eyes that practically beg for him to soothe her buzzing mind, to say something good, even if that means giving her lies.
> 
> And this man, whoever he is, looks back at her with eyes that hide nothing.
> 
> He looks at Vanya with something in his eyes that looks kind of like pity, kind of like pain.

Dave feels like the floor has been yanked out from under him completely.

Like one moment, he could feel the solid presence of the earth’s crust underneath his feet, and the next, he was sent plummeting into a helpless freefall, in which he could look down for as long as he wanted to without ever seeing a bottom. Without ever seeing an _end._

And there’s something so twisted in falling without ever hitting the ground; he’s breathless and panicked and he knows the most dangerous part is hitting the bottom, and a fall from this height would certainly kill him. But maybe that’s _worse;_ just because he has yet to see a bottom doesn’t mean there _isn’t_ one, but it also doesn’t mean there is. The anticipation is getting to him, clutching his heart in a grip hard enough to make him feel like he can’t breathe but light enough to hurt, and as he falls and falls he keeps seeing these false bottoms, pieces of solid land that flicker in and out of his vision- and each time he sees one, he is both paralyzed with fear and sickeningly relieved that the fall is almost over-

But each time he almost lands, the ground disappears, out of sight.

And the longer he goes without telling Klaus’s siblings what happened, the longer he falls. At this point, he’s beginning to wonder if he’ll ever be able to get the words out around their absolutely insane family (or apocalyptic?) drama.

“Who the hell is Harold Jenkins?”

Ah. And there is said family drama.

When the person- who Dave now recognizes as Five and who Dave now recognizes is, in fact, at least visually an early teenager- landed on the table, all attention immediately left him. And Dave doesn’t mean to make it seem like he’s seeking attention, like he just wants the spotlight- he just meant that it seemed that everyone forgot he’d even been saying anything in the first place in the excitement of Five’s arrival.

But Dave can’t _really_ blame them- I mean, what an entrance, right? Light had flashed in the room like strobes, and dust flew everywhere, and the briefcase which Five had landed on as he arrived was smoking and sparking, not to mention the whirlwind that was Five _himself._ Even Dave found himself a little sidetracked. 

Dave had never seen a child look so grim and determined in his entire life. As soon as he’d landed, he’d rolled off the bar and Dave had feared for a split second that he would simply land, limp like a ragdoll, on the hard ground- but he’d caught himself at the last second. Ramshackle and absolutely covered in dust and dirt, he’d snagged the coffee Allison had been holding and straight up chugged the entire thing, and then launched straight into conversation that, once again, Dave didn’t understand in the slightest. _“So, the apocalypse is in three days,”_ he’d said, and Dave really didn’t understand what the hell was so bad that they would hyperbolize it so much like that.

He didn’t understand what was so bad that they couldn’t spend a few _god damn minutes_ to hear something that Dave knew would undoubtedly be worse than whatever it was they were discussing so dramatically. Something Dave _knew_ would matter more to them. (At least, he hoped it would.)

But, alas, they just won’t _stop talking._ Dave has never seen another group of people interact so chaotically before- it was like repeatedly throwing a ping pong ball into a ceiling fan, ricocheting off the blades and bouncing off walls so quickly you wouldn’t even see it move.

Five declared the supposed apocalypse, and then claimed he had found out who caused it- a man named Harold Jenkins, apparently. 

Luckily, Dave wasn’t the only one who was confused, as nobody else had known who that was- however, the more Five tried to explain, the farther Dave was flung from even the slightest hint of sanity.

Something about masked lunatics, something about Five’s _former employers_ who supposedly _sent_ them, and a lot about time and space and the apocalypse and good _god_ , Dave couldn’t even do anything but stare at this point and let the words wash over his head.

He was beginning to get a little concerned, though, that the apocalypse they spoke of was more than just an exaggeration.

In a world involving robots, talking chimpanzees, ghosts, and a series of children born with superpowers, who’s to say there _shouldn’t_ be an apocalypse?

It would really just be the icing on the cake. Truly.

And then, suddenly, there is a lapse in time in which everybody else seems almost as lost as he is. (Almost.)

And then, the silence breaks.

“What do you mean, _protect time and space-"_

“Where is this Hazel, Five-”

“Why is this up to us, anyway-”

“Do you have any idea how insane this sounds?”

_“You know what else is insane?”_

Everybody stares at Five after he says that. It amazes Dave how such a small person can have such a huge amount of conviction in their voice, so much that it makes everybody else shut up immediately.

Klaus never told him how absolutely _terrifying_ his brother was.

“I look like a thirteen year old boy,” says Five, and Dave takes that to assume he isn’t _really_ a thirteen year old boy- so his memory serves him right about Five being an older person in a young body.

And then, says Five, “Klaus talks to the dead-”

And Dave freezes.

He freezes, because he should’ve said _talked._

Klaus _talked_ to the dead.

He did, but now he doesn’t, and _none of them know that._

“Excuse me,” he says, in a futile attempt to get their attention.

But nobody listens.

Vanya briefly glances at him out of the corner of her eye, and for a moment Dave holds her gaze, desperately hoping that she’ll _hear_ him.

But she quickly turns her attention back to Five, who’s now spouting some speech that Dave thinks is meant to be some sort of weird pep talk, and Dave feels something tired and raw and _bleeding_ begin to open inside his chest.

And, well, _sue_ him if he doesn’t really catch the rest of what Five is saying- what _any of them_ are saying.

He hears something about saving lives, and then a very solemn conversation about Allison’s daughter- which does give him pause. He wonders what happened to her.

“Let’s get this bastard,” Allison says, and Dave vaguely wonders what kind of wild context he must have missed to be _this lost_ in the entire situation.

But, honestly, he could care less. He’s not here to get caught up in whatever this is- and, honestly, he’s beginning to realize that it’s useless to even try.

Miraculously, they seem to come to some kind of conclusion, eventually.

“I've already lost two people this week- I'm not losing anyone else.”

 _Three, actually,_ is the first thing Dave thinks. Then, _I wonder who else he lost. So many people in such a short time...._

So he says again, “Excuse me.”

And still, _nobody hears him._

And that’s when Dave starts to get pissed.

What does it take to be heard by these people?

Is it that hard for them to recognize that he even exists?

The thing in his chest begins to bleed more and more, festering and growing more irritated as they talk and talk and somewhere, Dave knows it’s not as if they’re doing it on purpose- they’re not deliberately ignoring him, but Jesus Christ, Dave has never felt more invisible in his life.

He begins to wonder if he’s even making a sound, at this point. If a single phonon has left his lips in _days._

It wouldn’t surprise him if he wasn’t. He doesn’t have lungs; doesn’t have air. Nothing to make noise- nothing to make them _hear_ him.

So he’s tried air. He’s tried flesh; he’s tried fire.

And words have come from none of them.

So, this time, he chooses earth.

As he falls through the ground in his endless freefall, he drags his nails down the inner walls, and soil and mud and stone crumble into his hands. His nails break and bleed and still, he collects pieces of the earth to make words form in his throat. He’ll form a ground to land on with his bare hands if he has to.

So they talk and talk and _talk_ and minerals accumulate in the base of his throat, magma burning just as hot as the desperate creature that lives, thrashing, in his stomach.

“We don’t have time for this,” Five says.

Shards of broken glass come spilling out of Dave’s mouth.

And he makes sure they have no choice but to hear him _shatter_.

 _“Excuse_ me!”

_And they do._

★★★★★

Five has had a very, very bad day. 

Not that each of his days isn’t extraordinarily horrible, but his point stands.

After coming back from the Commission, he’d figured it would be cut and dry from there; he’d present his information, which would undeniably help save the _world_ , and he and his siblings would be well on their way to figuring out who Harold Jenkins is and terminating him.

Well. If he was being honest, no- he did not figure that. He’s too smart to truly believe that; he knows his siblings too well.

So at the same time as it is unbearably, _infuriatingly_ frustrating that trying to get his siblings in order is like herding very distractible, very unintelligent cats, he’s not necessarily _surprised._

Not to mention the literal apocalypse. Or Hazel and Cha Cha running loose. Or Luther’s idiot, pompous brain really thinking they’ll find anything useful in his _rock collection_ for God’s sake.

And then, on top of it all, some random guy is standing in their sitting room, looking like he’s about to burst into tears.

“And who might you be?” He grits out, because _really,_ the world is going to end in _three days._ Lunatic distractions are really not what he needs right now.

The man seems to pause for just a _millisecond_ at that, just a miniscule hesitation. So small that any average person wouldn’t notice it, but Five has learned to examine and catch countless microexpressions over the years. He doesn’t know what to make of the way the man’s eyebrows twitch down, though, or the slight tensing of his temples.

He takes a deep breath, and it shakes- as if he’s trying to keep his composure. “I’m a friend of Klaus’s,” he says, and Five clenches his jaw. He doesn’t want to decrease the importance of anything involving his siblings- any minor detail could contain some clue about the apocalypse, about a way he could _save_ them. But when it comes to Klaus, Five heavily doubts the probability of a world-saving piece of information coming from one of his friends who, due to the way he’s shaking right now, probably sells him cocaine or meth or something.

“I’m Klaus’s friend, and you need to _listen_ to me.”

Confused at the urgency and forcefulness of the statement, all eyes snap to him. There is a long, stiff silence, as everybody in the room stares at the man, waiting for him to elaborate.

He doesn’t. Not until Luther urges him on.

“Well, go ahead, then,” Luther mutters, exasperated, and Five can’t say he doesn’t feel the same.

The man shifts uncomfortably for a moment, looking down at the ground. He opens his mouth to begin, then clicks his jaw shut again. 

He swallows, and the room is so silently tense that he can almost hear it. He seems to steel himself, taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders.

If Five didn’t know any better, he’d say he looked like a man preparing for his own execution. There was some kind of dull fear in his eyes, but the kind of fear that you _know_ is warranted. The kind of fear in which you know you can’t do anything to numb the pain of what’s to come.

“I… don’t know how long Klaus has been missing here-”

“Missing?” Allison interrupts.

Vanya pipes up, alarmed. “What do you mean, missing?”

The man looks just as confused as the rest of them- okay, so maybe not _just as._ But Certainly close. Certainly more confused than Five would expect him to be, as the one explaining. He looks from face to face, taking in the confused expressions on each of their faces. “...How long has it been since any of you saw him?”

“I dunno… what, day before yesterday?”

Diego glances from person to person, each nodding their agreement.

The man stares, gobsmacked, as if they’d just dropped a huge bomb on him.

Five doesn’t really understand _why._ It’s not unusual not to hear from somebody for that long, and though he hasn’t had much time with Klaus’s adult self, he suspects it’s even _less_ unusual for _Klaus_ to disappear, for any length of time. 

He’s proven right when Diego continues. “...Listen, if you get to know Klaus, you’ll learn it’s just like him to disappear like that-”

“It’s not that.” The man takes another deep breath, and this one shakes like his hands do. He presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, his shoulders hunched. He digs one hand into his hair and takes a handful, and clenches his fist _hard._ Five knows the feeling- the feeling of needing something, _anything_ , to ground you to where you are right now. To tell you you’re here, solid, present- you must be, if you can feel things like pain. When the man opens his eyes again, Five thinks he can see the same sort of torturous weightlessness that he knows all too well. “I know where he is. I- I- I know what happened to him.”

A spark of irritation flickers in Five at the vague nature of the man’s words.

“Well- _happened_ to him? What happened? Is he alright?” Vanya asks, and her hands are clasped together, twisting. She looks nervous. She always has, but she looks towards him with eyes that practically beg for him to soothe her buzzing mind, to say something _good,_ even if that means giving her lies.

And this man, whoever he is, looks back at her with eyes that hide _nothing._

He looks at Vanya with something in his eyes that looks kind of like pity, kind of like pain. 

“He- I-...” He pauses, and Five wants to yell at him to _spit it out._ “Okay. Okay. He…. Listen, he time travelled.”

 _That_ gets his attention.

The man continues, and his eyes flit anxiously around the room, like a fly looking for an escape. “I don’t really fully understand _how,_ but he dropped down in the middle of a- of a _warzone._ ”

And Five stares at him, his mind racing a mile a minute, because _what the fuck is going on._

The man takes a deep breath, and seems to choke, ever so slightly. “And… Um… he… I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I-” His voice breaks, collapsing under the weight of the words, and he presses a shaking fist over his mouth for just a moment. He takes a moment, blinking rapidly, and then he takes a large, gulping breath. He fists one hand in the olive green camo fabric that hangs around his neck, and Five can see the way his tendons strain under the amount of pressure the man is putting into the grip.

“He… he got hit. The enemy soldiers got him. I… He didn’t… he didn’t make it.”

The five of them seem to take one collective breath, and the room drops into a chilling silence, in which Five can feel something creeping up his throat.

Be it anger or confusion or something completely unknown, has yet to be seen.

The man sways, like the floor might vanish from underneath him. Like he might throw up. Like he might pass out right then and there.“I’m so sorry, I-”

“Listen, as entertaining as this is, I don’t really have a lot of time to deal with whatever weird-ass joke Klaus has roped you into playing on us,” Five spits, because _how dare he._ “I really don’t.” And he feels something that might be rage but could be denial seep into his bones, and isn’t that just lovely. Luckily, the universe and him seem to be in agreement of the fact that nothing seems to make its way out of him except for rage, so in that moment, Five lets whatever denial-rage that sits under his tongue come spilling out, and he can see it _burn._ “We’re kind of on a time crunch here, so if you don’t mind, you can go back to him and tell him that we’ve got a bit of an emergency going on, so if he could get his head out of his ass, that would be great."

And the man stares at him.

The man stares at him like he just strangled his puppy and made him watch and Five feels something snag at his already frayed and torn edges, something like denial, something like anger, something like complete, utter _despair,_ something like crushing failure and paralysing fear and the cold, cold navy blue of a desolate world in which he claws at the ground because there is no conveniently abandoned shovel and the aching, numbing blue of thirteen year old muscles trying to drag twenty-nine year old corpses out of collapsed concrete and the deep, endless, _abyssal_ blue of silence, in a world where no voice is heard but his own, but really, was there any voice at all? If a tree falls in a forest and there's no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Nobody knows.

Five was falling, and maybe he still is.

“This isn’t a _joke,”_ says the man, breaking Five out of his downward spiral. He sounds bewildered. He sounds devastated. He gapes, for just a second, his jaw opening and closing like a fish out of water, and Five doesn't _mean_ to be cruel, but it's the only thing warding off the impending sense of debilitating reality. “Why would I joke about this?”

“I wouldn’t put it past Klaus,” Allison cuts in, and she sounds steady. She sounds confident and cool and certain.

Five hasn't seen her in almost half a decade, but her tells are still the same.

Her arms are crossed, and her pointer finger scrapes up and down the small patch of her arm on which it rests, and every few seconds, she shifts her weight from one foot to the other.

It's been that way since they were children.

 _"Suppressing your fidgets is crucial, children,_ " their father would say. _"The smallest shift could tell an experienced interrogator everything they need to know. And Number Three- your incessant swaying certainly won't go unnoticed on such an occasion."_

But Allison never needed anything more than a rumour to make them forget they wanted anything in the first place, so she never quite suppressed that habit.

And some things never changed, he supposed, because there she stands, swaying like a reed in the wind.

“Me neither. He once pretended to break a leg so I would give him pity money. His casts were made of toilet paper, so I genuinely don’t know how he managed to get his hands on a wheelchair,” Diego adds, and Five is surprised to see that out of them all, Diego seems the calmest at what the man is saying. 

He would’ve thought the opposite, considering, from what Five has seen since returning, Diego seems the closest to Klaus out of their siblings. But maybe that’s why he isn’t worried- he knows Klaus best, right? So he’d be the one to know if Klaus was just playing a fucked up prank, right?

He must be.

He _has_ to be.

“Probably stole it out of rehab or something,” Luther mutters, and Allison elbows him savagely in the ribs.

“Even if this was a joke, those are _not_ the same thing,” the mystery man cuts in. He’s looking in between them with these wide doe eyes, and they’re glossy and blue and they’re _innocent_ , but Five knows what haunted eyes look like, and this man has them. “And it’s _not._ A joke, that is. I- I- I would never…. That’s not _funny.”_

His gaze shifts from face to face, finally settling on Five’s. “I swear,” he says, and he’s desperate. Five can see it in the way his hands shake. In the way his eyes look far away and unbelievably focused at the same time. In the way he’s beginning to wilt, as he begins to accept that he won’t be believed. “Please. I’m being serious.”

Five grits his teeth so hard he fears they might break. He doesn’t- he _doesn’t_ believe him. He’s never met this man before. He has no reason to trust him. He doesn’t even know his _name._ He doesn’t get to tell him whether or not his brother is dead. 

Diego straightens up, slapping a hand down on the bar. The noise makes the mystery man jump. Five almost does, too, but that reaction had been forced out of him _years_ ago. “Why are we debating this when we have a human lie detector right here?”

He fixes his eyes onto Allison, whose hands clench around her arms, her nails making little crescent shaped depressions in her skin.

She hesitates, and then mutters, “I… I already told you. I don’t do that anymore.”

There’s a moment of hesitation as they all look uncertainly between themselves, not knowing whether or not to push her.

“Allison,” Luther says finally, soft and private. Allison looks towards him with an anxious expression, but there’s trust and something unnervingly intimate in her face as well. (Five feels a little nauseous about it, but it is neither the time nor the place.) “Please. We need to know.”

Allison blinks at Luther, her shoulders tensing up towards her ears, and she begins to chew on her lower lip, seeming to have an internal debate with herself. “....And we’re _sure_ there’s no other way-”

“Unless we looked through soldier records. But he probably wasn’t registered legally in the army- it’s possible that he wasn’t even a citizen of the United States at that point in time,” Five ponders. His skin is beginning to itch with the sense that they need to be doing something, _anything_ to save the world. But a bigger sense tells him that he needs to know. He needs to be absolutely _certain_ that Klaus is alright, and Allison is the key to that knowledge, though indirectly. “And besides- we don’t have the time for that. We don’t even have the time for _this.”_

Allison's forehead pinches, and she takes as deep breath.

Her shoulders drop in resignation.

“.....Okay,” she says. "Fine." And it is clear to Five this is something important to her, that it's an emotional struggle for her to do this.

If the living status of one of his siblings wasn't on the line, he might find it in himself to feel bad about that.

There's a tense moment of anticipation- which, seemingly, are very common in this conversation.

Allison sighs, stepping forward.

_"I heard-"_

The man sucks in a sharp breath. “Hold on, hold on-” he stumbles backwards, hip bumping sharply into a side table. He doesn't seem to flinch, but his breath is working itself steadily up into a sprint, and his shaking seems to have upped a notch. “Just. Gimme a minute.”

Five breaks, then, because the world is ending and there is too much happening and they don't have the time for this or the apocalypse or for anything else. “We don’t _have_ a minute-”

“ _I understand that!_ ” The man snaps, sharp as a whip and unexpected. Five grits his teeth. They need to _hurry up._

He swallows thickly. He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes, and then releases a shaky breath. After a few more tenuous seconds, he drops his hands and looks up at Allison. 

“Okay… okay. You’re- you’re Allison, right?" Allison gives a hesitant nod. "And you can… uh… control people, right? Or something similar?”

“...Yeah. Something like that."

Five wonders, for a moment, how he knows that. He wonders if it was from a news segment, or an interview. Maybe even one of those comic books?

“Okay. I’m Dave.” He sniffles, his eyes looking slightly glossy, and holds out his hand. Allison, bemused, takes it delicately. He blinks hard, once, then twice, and steels himself. “...Okay. Go ahead.”

Five can see the resistance in Allison's eyes, the way she forces herself to suppress it. “...Alright. I’m sorry about this. But I have to."

The man- Dave, apparently- gives her a small smile, and it's shaky and wet and unsteady, but it's soft, too. It's warm, somehow, and Allison seems to relax a little due to the reassurance.

She takes a deep breath, and speaks.

_“I heard a rumour that you told us the truth about where Klaus is, and what state he’s in.”_

Dave stiffens. Normally, when people go under one of Allison's rumours, they become dazed- just a little out of it. But when the rumour washes over Dave, he goes stiff as a board, and when he speaks, it's blunt and brutal, with no concern for the way words are said- just that they _are_ said, as is the nature of rumours.

“When I left him, he was bleeding out if not already deceased in the trenches of the A Shau Valley. Right now, at this point in time, he’s probably six feet under in an unmarked grave."

The words hit them like a freight train.

_“Oh my god.”_

“This… this can’t be real, right?” Diego chokes. “Tell me this isn’t real.”

Luther gapes at Dave. “You… _fuck.”_

Five, himself, isn't doing so well.

Panic is starting to seep in. Panic, because the apocalypse looms over them. Panic, because he has no way to undo this. Panic, because one- two, counting Ben- of his siblings are dead, even after the years he spent in the Apocalypse, and then the years he spent in the commission. 

Even after everything, he was too late for one.

He was too distracted for another.

Meanwhile, Dave sways violently, looking sick. He staggers into the same side table he'd hit before, and makes a rough retching noise that sounds painful. He doesn't throw up, though- he just stumbles to the ground, leaning up against the side table, and presses a fist to his mouth. His body wracks once or twice more with the nausea, before he coughs it back.

“Okay… okay. Okay, this doesn’t _necessarily_ mean that’s true. Allison’s powers can’t force somebody to tell the truth if they don’t know it- all this means is that he _believes_ that Klaus is dead.” Five paces furiously, brain working, grasping at straws that aren't there, looking for some clue to tell him that it's all a lie. It's all a big puzzle waiting to be solved. He just doesn't have the last piece. He's just _missing_ something, because this can't be true. It _can't._

But it _can._

He finds himself choking back bile just like Dave, and he thinks he understands.

But he can't let it go just yet. There must be _some_ way.

And he knows he's not being realistic, that he'll have to accept that there is no last piece. But he just can't give it up.

“There are infinite ways that he could be deluding himself into false memories. It could have been a dream, or a particularly bad trip, or-”

“I can prove it," Dave cuts in. His voice is rough, and it scrapes against the air as it leaves his mouth. He's staring blankly into the space before him, looking, for the first time since Five met him, calm.

But it's not a soothing sort of calm. It's a calm that comes from giving up, from knowing there's nothing you can do to save yourself.

It's a tranquility seeded from believing that anything else is pointless.

But then he pulls something from around his neck, and holds it up towards Five.

It's a necklace of some sort. The pendant swings in the air, back and forth, spinning. Five deftly swipes it into his fingers.

It's a set of dog tags. The cool metal makes Five shiver, and he runs a thumb over the raised letters.

“Katz, David,” he reads. His eyes scan over the words, and as far as he can tell, it’s very real. He takes note of the name, and the religion, too.

He also takes note of the dry, rusted red dust that rubs off into his fingers. He tries to ignore the way the faint copper smell makes his head spin wildly.

He feels every cell in his body begin to burn as he realizes that he can’t deny this anymore.

The puzzle is complete, and there isn’t any way to change the picture.

“I’ve got a tattoo, too. If you need.” Dave still doesn’t look at him. Five doesn’t tell him that he doesn’t need to see anything else to believe him.

Dave’s hand absentmindedly comes up to loosely grasp whatever blanket is hanging around his neck. Five looks at it closer, noting its olive green camo print, and the slightly shiny material.

It looks warm. It looks waterproof. It looks like something one might use in wet climates.

It looks like a Woobie, and a nagging suspicion grows in Five’s head.

Then, he remembers Dave’s rumour bidden words.

_“....in the trenches of the A Shau Valley…"_

If his knowledge of geography serves him right- and he knows it does-... well.

The A Shau Valley is in Vietnam.

And it was a _hell_ of a place to fight in.

“...Earlier, you said the A Shau Valley,” He says slowly. “Would you mind telling me what year it was before you came here?”

Dave doesn’t hesitate, reciting the information like a machine. “1968.”

_The Vietnam War._

Then, he hears a noise from behind him, like a wounded animal. Something wretched and bone chilling and guttural.

He spins to find Diego with his head in his hands, Luther looking lost, and Allison with tears on her face, but…. She’s hovering next to Vanya.

He thinks back and realizes that Vanya hasn’t spoken since the first time Dave told them Klaus was dead.

She’s standing with her hands over her mouth, and she’s shaking violently, her knees wobbling dangerously. Her eyes are nearly closed, but tears spill out at an alarming rate. Her face is screwed up with emotion, and it makes Five’s already jumping heart lurch into overdrive.

She’s the one who made the noise.

“Vanya… Vanya, are you alright?” Allison asks.

Everybody looks to her.

Vanya doesn’t respond, but she makes a sound, keening and high pitched. Allison steps forward, gently resting a hand on her arm.

Vanya straightens, mouth clacking shut.

She opens her eyes.

They’re white.

Five steps towards her, alarmed, while Allison steps away.

Then, with a deafening sound, the windows in the academy shatter, and glass falls, glinting like the rain thundering outside.

Vanya hits the ground.

And then, a second later, everybody else does, too.

The sky flashes white outside, but all Five sees behind his eyelids is black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> howdy kiddos
> 
> i dont have much to say about this one except for that half of it was written when I fell asleep at six pm and woke up at 3 am! so! i wouldnt be surprised if it wasnt very good!
> 
> I did give you guys Five though!! i hope yall liked his point of view. i wanted to give an outside perspective of dave, and i thought fives would be the most interesting. I'm worried i didnt characterize him well though, so five stans (and everybody else), PLEASE let me know how i did with him, bc ive never written him before. 
> 
> sorry this chapter is literally like,, JUST dialogue. idk how i managed to make this conversation five thousand words, but i promise, things will actually happen next chapter. I was gonna continue on into what happened afterwards but it was already like 5 and a half thousand words and i didn't want it to be like, SUPER long so i had to end it there.
> 
> i love you guys. thank yall for being so nice and for reading and hyping me up in the comments. better be careful tho, you might go and give me a big head or smth
> 
> i live for comments tho so!!! if you want to leave one i would give you my entire heart!!
> 
> yeah anyways i hope you guys like it pls let me know what you thought!!
> 
> have an absolutely radical day broskis
> 
>   
> (title from Be Thankful You're You by Fern Jones)


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